The Bloj

The Tyranny of Language, Part I

Posted on February 20th, 2006 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc..

Assertion 1: People prefer to read things that are easy.

Interestingly enough, the U.S. Federal Government uses a numerical test on all its documents. Known as the Flesch-Kincaid Readibility Test, it is designed to figure out how easy a paper is to read, by measuring the length of words and syllables. (And no, government agencies aren’t trying to make their papers less readable!)
The Gunning-Fog Index, a similar test developed by an Oxford professor, suggests the following scores for typical documents:

• 10 — Newsweek
• 9 — Reader’s Digest
• 8 — Ladies’ Home Journal
• 7 — True Confessions
• 6 — Comic books

Let’s ask a stupid question. Why are comic books so low? So that more people can read them. In particular, now middle schoolers can read them, and they will be more likely to enjoy them/buy them.

Assertion 2: Obfuscation is used as a tool by those who have knowledge to hide and hold on to it.

obfuscation - the activity of obscuring people’s understanding, leaving them baffled or bewildered. (definition)

This is straightforward. The Privacy Policy for Bonzi Buddy, a well known piece of spyware, has a Gunning-Fog score of 15.67. (Test from here) It should be painfully obvious that if I want to tell someone something without actually revealing anything, that I should use confusing legalese and weird language.

Assertion 3: People naturally gravitate towards the easy to understand - simplification is a tool used by those who have knowledge to sell it and market it.

This is quite obvious. Ask yourself, for example, what the Gunning-Fog score would be for a certain Apple ad campaign.

(For Gas, I should note, that as with the rest of this, there are of course obvious exceptions.)

Assertion 4: People sometimes go in the reverse direction; Obfuscation is used as a tool to appear intelligent.

This also happens a lot, so often that we might call it “the term paper effect.”

In the next article, I will discuss:

• How can we use this to understand the sources of confusion in writing and speech.
• How we can become more aware of confusion in our own writing.

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