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From: colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: reading level of military documents
Message-ID: <1019@gloria.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Mar-85 11:55:59 EST
Article-I.D.: gloria.1019
Posted: Sun Mar 17 11:55:59 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Mar-85 04:59:48 EST
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Organization: The Church of Artificial Intelligence
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["In the service of Virman Vundabar we learn perfection!"]

> 	About a year ago a friend of mine interviewed for a job as a
> tech writer at a division of one of the large defense contractors
> around Boston. She was told that they needed a lot of tech writers
> because they had just landed a contract from the army to re-write all
> of the army's field manuals from eighth grade reading level to fifth
> grade level! Apparently this same company had done the job of
> re-writing all manuals to the eighth grade level a few years before.

"Reading level" is a misleading concept.  A document can have a high
reading level because
	1. the content is difficult or abstruse;
	2. the document is badly written.

In my experience, it's usually number 2.  And I'm convinced that technical
writing in the U. S. Army has deteriorated steadily in the last forty years.
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel