Ledes five publications of July 5, 2015

Newspapers today front paged stories on UPSC toppers, Ira Singhal being the leader among them. Lead (lede) of the stories highlighted success of a differently abled young woman in UPSC examination. Ira is the first physically challenged woman to achieve the success. Not only that, it also spoke of four girls being the top rankers.

I carried readability test on the leads of some newspapers and websites of two news channels. What is readability test? (http://newsmansenglish.in/readabilitytest.htm )

The focus was on which publications wrote leads that were easy to understand. Which lead had minimum words, and how did each of these leads fare in the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level tests.

The Times of India’s lead today has 51 words, as against the advice of veterans between 15 to 25 words in a sentence. (NEVER make an intro verbose- let it not exceed 25 words. (Jyoti Sanyal in Write it Right). Better to aim for an average of 15-20 words throughout. (Martin Cutts in Oxford Guide to Plain English). The ToI, thus, has lede with the worst readability score among the leads of publications studied today:

Following are the statistics of leads

Newspaper	Lede	Number of words in the lead	Number of sentence	Number of paragraph	Flesch Reading Ease	Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Times of India	While the glass ceiling in the civil services was broken long ago, it was resoundingly shattered on Saturday when women secured the top four positions in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination 2014, with the No 1 rank-holder, Ira Singhal, also being a differently abled achiever, which is a first.	51	1	1	5.7	25.1
Indian Express	Singhal on Saturday became the first differently abled woman to top the civil services examination in which women took the top four positions.	25	1	1	29.1	15.4
Hindustan Times	Ira Singhal became the first physically challenged candidate to top the civil services examination that saw women take the top four ranks on Saturday. And giving Delhi something to cheer about, three of these women — including Singhal — are from the Capital.	41	1	2	41.5	12.5
DNA	Ira Singhal, a physically handicapped IRS officer from Delhi, topped the Civil services examination in which the top four positions went to women.	23	1	1	19	14.9
NDTV	Delhi's Ira Singhal topped the Union Public Services Commission civil services exam this year. But celebrations at her home are a little muted, as her parents are apprehensive about whether she will get a posting.	35	1	2	46.4	11.1
IBNLive	Mahatma Gandhi rightly said, "strength does not come from physical capacity, it comes from indomitable will." A strong will power can take you places and Ira Singhal has proved it once again. Differently-abled Singhal topped the 2014 Union Public Service Commission Civil Services Examination becoming a role model for one and all. Singhal is currently working as an Indian Revenue Service officer after clearing the 2011 exam. She has also done her MBA from Faculty of Management Studies in Delhi.	80	2	5	36.2	12.1