Foggy Bottoms: Using the Fog Index on your Content

The Gunning Fog Index has been around since the 50s, and like other common-sense things it has found its way into current web best practices. (After all, good writing is good writing. On the web it just has to be both scannable and good.)

As Content Manager for a multinational corporation, it is my job to make sure that the content we post on our corporate website, including in our communities, is actually readable.

The Fog Index is one nifty tool that helps you see if your writing is overly complex. We have found that, at least in the high tech world, the rule seems to be "Use multi-syllabic synonyms for common words, and you'll sound smart."

The Fog Index measures the complexity of sentences and paragraphs. It measures number of words in a sentence, number of words with three or more syllables, and punctuation marks, to come up with a Fog Index number. The higher the number, the foggier your content.

The number loosely corresponds with the number of years of education that should be required in order to understand the content in question. But in my experience, even people with 28 years of education will glaze over when reading web content with a Fog Index of 28.

Here's the thing. Just because you can understand something doesn't mean you want to read it. I imagine we can all understand the actual words used in the tax code, given enough time and caffeine. But it is the last thing on earth I would want to read on a web page.

And when it comes to marketing your products on the web, it shouldn't become a Darwinian struggle in which only the most patient and persevering readers are allowed to understand your products.

You have between 1.5 and 6 seconds to communicate on an average web page. In that time you have to snag the attention of the visitor and help them understand 2-3 important things. That's it. If one of those things happens to be what they are looking for (carry the much-discussed "scent of information") then bingo. You win.

They are not going to spend the time to decode your foggy synonyms and try to match that with their intent. They will glaze over and assume they're on the wrong page.

There are several sites that you can use to test your Fog Index. I use this one right now http://simbon.madpage.com/Fog/

It requires a bit of skill to de-Fog a Foggy page. You have to actually understand what the writer meant before they ran it through their obfuscator. But you do get better at it with time, so don't give up.

And just in case you were wondering, the Fog Index for this article is 9.024. The overall target for the web is 5 (5th-grade level), and a good target for technology writing is 11. But as you can see in this article, you can incorporate nice juicy words like "obfuscator" and still have a low Fog Index, as long as that is a "payoff" word, and the rest of the page is quick and easy to absorb.

CHALLENGE

Let's look for Foggy content and share it here. Post it in a comment.

RULE: it has to be real content that you either had to edit, or found on a website.

I'll start with this little gem (which is taped to my wall in the Fog Hall of Shame). It was submitted to me as potential copy for a web banner.

"Maximize data center efficiency via simplified heterogeneous virtual machine management and policy driven automation." FOG INDEX: 28.46