Page 25 - Mini-Module 11

We purposely took an extreme example of a badly written report passage to
illustrate a point. Not all reports are quite as bad as that, but some are even
worse. Try deciphering the instructions in income tax forms in some
countries or the content of legal documents. Many of these contain genuine
'gobbledegook'. It is so easy to let your reports become like that. You start
using long words where shorter ones will do; writing sentences which never
end; before you know it, the whole thing is unintelligible. You are probably
aware of one of the best pieces of advice given: KISS ‐ Keep It Simple Stupid.
This is particularly true of reports.

You should have arrived at the following Fog Index figures: 83 for the wordy
passage and 24 for the simpler one. You may be skilful enough to write even
better than the second example, but as long as you can keep the index
below 30, you are writing clearly enough.
Now take a piece of your own writing, any piece you like, and calculate your
Fog Index. Ideally it should be a report or a document which you have
written for colleagues at work. If you do not have these, then one page of an
assignment or other piece of writing would do. It is fine to base the
assessment on one page, as that is a good guide to the rest of the content.
Take a random page though rather than one which may be uncharacteristic!

Having understood the features of the index, you should be able to have
some impact on your writing immediately. In Task Three you are asked to
make sense of a wordy passage that it is difficult to understand.

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