In Defense of the Fog Index

With the emphasis on &dquo;plain English,&dquo; readability indexes have recently come under a great deal of scrutiny.~ The complaints are many. Readability indexes do not predict ease of reading 100 percent of the time. They reduce a complex concept to only two variables, sentence and word length, but making sentences shorter does not necessarily make them more readable. They eliminate choice in writing and emphasize the product rather than the process of writing. Although all of these criticisms of our use of the indexes are valid, many of our difficulties with the indexes arise from our misuse of them, not from failings