Readable

I find this post mind-boggling.

Science fiction writer Michael Burstein is concerned about "readibility". He quotes a dubious-sounding "writer's guide" that grades prose according to a pecentage of readibility (75% means one's writing can be understood by 75% of readers) and according to grade level. The author of this guide "also analyzed one [of] his own work[s], and to his chagrin discovered that his readability was only in the 60% range, and that his prose [was] aimed at an 8th grade level. He decided to use this information as a tool to revise his future work." You might think he would want to raise this to at least an 11th or 12th grade level, but no:

He created his Ideal Writing Standard, which I'm calling the Smith Writing Ideal Standard or SWID, because I can pronounce it "swid." He said that from now on, he revises all his work to the following four standards PER ANY SCENE:

No more than 4.25 characters per word.

No more than 5% passive voice.

No less than an 80% readability on the Flesch Reading Ease scale.

A Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 5 (although on the chart, he lists that as 4-6).

Burstein finds this all very enlightening. Apparently he thinks good writing is dumb writing:

I suspect that what happens is that as writers write, they learn how to write better. I doubt that Gaiman (or King, or any of the bestselling writers Smith analyzed) are using their grammar checker in such a mechanical fashion. Instead, I think that they've developed an instinct, a knack if you will, for language. Somewhere inside their minds they've learned what works and what doesn't, and it just so happens that as they write, their instincts kick in, and they make their prose as accessible as possible.

So: "Accessible" means accessible to a fourth- or fifth-grader. Writing better means abandoning words of more than 4.25 characters. Nothing other than short, declarative sentences need apply. A "knack for language" means knowing how to deplete it, reduce it to its maximum degree of dessication. Knowing "what works" means learning how short your audience's attention span probably is and doing your damndest to shorten it a little more.

Is this really what it means to be a "commerical writer"? Never challenge your reader, always descend to what you imagine to be his/her level of illiteracy? Do such writers really imagine they're writing for fifth-graders, or just adults who don't know how to read in the first place? What earthly satisfaction can there be in "entertaining" such non-readers?

Has writing as a career really become just another means of keeping the cash flowing? Burstein urges us to "try a few scenes from our work through the grammar checker and see what pops out at the end. Because the higher the grade level at which we pitch our prose, the fewer our readers." Does anyone else think this is just plain mercenary, a disgusting way to earn a living? Burstein pretends to have respect for his readers, but he doesn't. He must implicitly think they're boobs, but as long as they fork over the money or help him win awards.

(Link provided via s1ngularity::criticism.)

Comments

[Trent Walters]

Burstein was referring to his novel proposal which was aimed at writing for children. I don't think he has a problem with higher level language, but he saw it an issue of practicality: Do you want to reach a wider audience? He pointed out his own writing was "adult" level and needed to bring it down for this particular children's novel--at least that was what I gathered.

If I were writing for children, I would probably adjust the language level myself.

Still it's a little disturbing at our nation's overwhelming preference for simple language. I hate critique groups with new writers because their high school English teachers drummed into them nonsense about "run-ons," which is basically any sentence that goes over twenty words--not a grammatically incorrect sentence.

[Dan Green]

I don't think he was referring only to children's writing. He praised King, Gaiman, et.al. for being suitably dumbed down.

[Ron]

Flesch-Kincaid is used by governments (especially the feds) and by educational institutions to determine readability. I used earlier versions of it when I worked as a freelancer for My Weekly Reader in the very early 1970s. I've also used it to analyse the writing of other poets (see my piece on Barrett Watten in the Aerial special issue devoted to his work). It can be revealing, tho not in the mindless rote way it's usually employed.

[Ray Davis]

It might be fun as an Oulipo-type exercise to try for extremes on the various scales. C. K. Ogden translated a bit of "Finnegans Wake" (the same passage James Joyce recorded) into Basic English. Here's the finale:

"Night now! Say it, say it, tree! Night night! The story say of stem or stone. By the side of the river water of, this way and that way waters of. Night!"

Jackson Mac Low experimented with Basic English a few times, too.

But yeah, when applied to judge writing mechanically, Flesch-Kincaid is pretty creepy.

[Scott]

I think Ron is on the right track. This sounds like the mathematical formula Flesch created to rate the comprehensibility of prose. See this article:

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i49/49b01601.htm

And, yes, Flesch wasn't a friend of literature. If anything, he was even more stringent in simplifying prose than Strunk & White.