Readability Test result
A Mumbai daily has the following lead for an important story:
The state government on Thursday declared its willingness to hand over the Yashwant Sonawane murder case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) even as the central government announced an ex-gratia payment of `25 lakh to the slain additional collector's family and immediate measures to curb adulteration of petroleum products.
If you run Readability Tests through this text, offered by MS Word, you have the following results:
Number of Words: 50, Paragraph: 1, Number of sentences: 1, Flesch Reading Ease: 00, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 26
In simple words, this means that the text is difficult for the readers to understand quickly. Can we not split and rephrase the sentence as follows:
The state government on Thursday declared its willingness to hand over the Yashwant Sonawane murder case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The central government, in the meanwhile, announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 25 lakh to the family of slain additional collector. It promised to take immediate measures to curb adulteration of petroleum products.
Run the Readability test, and see the result:
Number of Words: 56, Paragraph: 1 Number of sentences: 3, Flesch Reading Ease: 35.3, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 12.9
The paragraph has three sentences which has 23 words in the first sentence, 21 in the second and 12 in the third.
The test indicates that the lead is easier to understand.
How does this read on the readability scale?:
ReplyDeleteThe Maharashtra Government is willing to have the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe the murder of Yashwant Sonawane allegeldy by the oil adulteration mafia. Meanwhile, the central government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh slain official's family and promised to act to curb adulteration of diesel and petrol.
Now the readability test results are as follows: Flesch Reading Ease: 22.4, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 16.3.
ReplyDeleteThe words 'declared its willingness' and 'in the' (meanwhile),(ex-gratia)payment, and take immediate measures were not wanted.
Thanks.
I recall the long leads of GK Reddy, Delhi Bureau Chief of The Hindu which sometimes ran to 150-200 words but never lacked clarity. Good English education helped, of course, but then news writing is for the ordinary reader as well, right?
ReplyDelete