Tonight I found myself part of a discussion on the Fry Readability Formula. Graph above courtesy of this blog.
How did this topic come up? When you're surrounded by twenty fellow editors from various fields, all at a seminar to hone your skills, it naturally follows.
The point of writing is to be readable — to communicate — above all else.
With above statement hanging in air, the debate really begins.
I think the length of a sentence doesn't really matter. Nothing becomes less boring simply because it's written in shorter sentences.
Posted by: Kai @ BlogWorks | May 24, 2007 at 04:26 PM
Kai@BlogWorks — You wrote: "Nothing becomes less boring simply because it's written in shorter sentences."
Yes! And that is always a big part of the debate --- how do you keep people's attention? While it's important to make things completely understandable, where is the point where the writing/writer loses the audience?
Depends on who the audience is, subject matter, a ton of other factors...
Posted by: KG | May 25, 2007 at 12:54 AM