Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!rex!ames!amelia!pioneer.arc.nasa.gov!samlb
From: samlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Sam Bassett RCD)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: style
Message-ID: <4369@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 31 Dec 89 07:06:06 GMT
References: <1524@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu>
Sender: news@amelia.nas.nasa.gov
Reply-To: samlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Sam Bassett RCD)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Mtn Vw CA 94035
Lines: 54


	Readabilty grades usually are supposed to be a measure of how
many years of schooling one would need to understand the text, so the
numbers you got indicate that someone would have to be at least a sophomore
in college to understand whatever it was that you ran through 'style'.

	The longer the words and sentences are, the harder (according to
the theories, anyway) it is to understand them.  The ideal is a high
school sophmore, I think -- 10/11, while a lot of writing has to be
pitched for no more than 6th grade to be generally understood.

	The other numbers struck me as being pretty good -- the indicated
that you write clear, active sentences, without much passive voice.

=========================================

I ran the above through 'style', and  got:

Script started on Sat Dec 30 23:02:39 1989

  
readability grades:
        (Kincaid) 14.0  (auto) 14.7  (Coleman-Liau)  9.8  (Flesch) 13.4 (47.6)
sentence info:
        no. sent 4 no. wds 119
        av sent leng 29.8 av word leng 4.52
        no. questions 0 no. imperatives 0
        no. nonfunc wds 62  52.1%   av leng 5.92
        short sent (<25) 50% (2) long sent (>40)  25% (1)
        longest sent 50 wds at sent 1; shortest sent 19 wds at sent 2
sentence types:
        simple  25% (1) complex  75% (3)
        compound   0% (0) compound-complex   0% (0)
word usage:
        verb types as % of total verbs
        tobe  30% (6) aux  10% (2) inf  35% (7)
        passives as % of non-inf verbs   8% (1)
        types as % of total
        prep 7.6% (9) conj 1.7% (2) adv 4.2% (5)
        noun 21.8% (26) adj 11.8% (14) pron 10.1% (12)
        nominalizations   0 % (0)
sentence beginnings:
        subject opener: noun (0) pron (0) pos (0) adj (1) art (3) tot 100%
        prep   0% (0) adv   0% (0) 
        verb   0% (0)  sub_conj   0% (0) conj   0% (0)
        expletives   0% (0)

	Evidently, I write a little simpler than thou!  ;-)


Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center, 
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792;  Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb@well.sf.ca.us                     samlb@ames.arc.nasa.gov 
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'