So I’m sharing it:
grade-level requirements to read NRO authors-
using the Gunning-Fog Index*, a sampling from most recent articles:
11.03 Frum (that’s 11 years of schooling)
10.94 Murdock
10.60 Ledeen
10.58 Hanson
10.12 Derbyshire
10.11 Novak
9.59 Buckley
8.77 Nordlinger
8.47 Brookhiser
8.44 Coffin
8.00 Seipp
7.90 Blyth
7.82 Kudlow
7.62 Lopez
7.07 O’Bierne
6.91 Goldberg
6.64 Lowry
6.52 York
6.32 Stuttaford
*The following is the algorithm to determine the Gunning-Fog index.
* Calculate the average number of words you use per sentence.
* Calculate the percentage of difficult words in the sample (words with three or more syllables).
* Add the totals together, and multiply the sum by 0.4.
* Algorithm: (average_words_sentence +
number_words_three_syllables_plus) * 0.4
The result is your Gunning-Fog index, which is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content.
The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.