[SV]

My apologies if this isn't the best group for the question, I'm tapping many
sources on this hoping to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

I'm a technical writer and familiar with MS-Word's "Fleish-Kincaid
Readability" statistics. A nice tool, but one that doesn't provide guidance
along with the information.

Anyone know of a source for readability/grade level guidance? An example
being the "Don't utilize 'utilize', use 'use!" admonition for simplicity.

We aim for an 8th grade reading level overall and I know there are words
that tend to be higher level and words that tend to be lower level. I can
catch a lot myself (This all started when I realized I was writing "prior
to" instead of "before" and "necessary" instead of "needed") but got to
thinking that perhaps there's some form of guidance.

Any suggestions would be appreciated,

Shane

[Jay Freedman]

There's a huge "plain English" movement that aims to replace "gobbledegook"
with simpler words. Even some government agencies have joined it. Have a
look at
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-...ain+english%22
for starting places, especially http://www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

SV wrote:
My apologies if this isn't the best group for the question, I'm
tapping many sources on this hoping to find the proverbial needle in
the haystack.
I'm a technical writer and familiar with MS-Word's "Fleish-Kincaid
Readability" statistics. A nice tool, but one that doesn't provide
guidance along with the information.

Anyone know of a source for readability/grade level guidance? An
example being the "Don't utilize 'utilize', use 'use!" admonition for
simplicity.
We aim for an 8th grade reading level overall and I know there are
words that tend to be higher level and words that tend to be lower
level. I can catch a lot myself (This all started when I realized I
was writing "prior to" instead of "before" and "necessary" instead of
"needed") but got to thinking that perhaps there's some form of
guidance.
Any suggestions would be appreciated,

Shane

[SV]

Jay,
Thanks for th einfo, I'll dig right in.. "Plain English" was a search I
hadn't considered!!!

Shane
"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
There's a huge "plain English" movement that aims to replace
"gobbledegook" with simpler words. Even some government agencies have
joined it. Have a look at
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-...ain+english%22
for starting places, especially http://www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so all may benefit.

SV wrote:
My apologies if this isn't the best group for the question, I'm
tapping many sources on this hoping to find the proverbial needle in
the haystack.
I'm a technical writer and familiar with MS-Word's "Fleish-Kincaid
Readability" statistics. A nice tool, but one that doesn't provide
guidance along with the information.

Anyone know of a source for readability/grade level guidance? An
example being the "Don't utilize 'utilize', use 'use!" admonition for
simplicity.
We aim for an 8th grade reading level overall and I know there are
words that tend to be higher level and words that tend to be lower
level. I can catch a lot myself (This all started when I realized I
was writing "prior to" instead of "before" and "necessary" instead of
"needed") but got to thinking that perhaps there's some form of
guidance.
Any suggestions would be appreciated,

Shane