July 5, 2010
One easy way to tell a windbag from a sage is to measure the Fog Index of their writing. Take the average number of words they use per sentence. Calculate the percentage of words that are three syllables or more. Add these two figures and multiply that sum by 0.4. The resulting number is the Fog Index. This is a rough measure of how many years of schooling you would need to understand what the windbag (or the sage) is writing about.
You might be surprised that the Bible, Shakespeare, Mark Twain and other quality literary texts have very low Fog Indexes. About 6. In other words a sixth grader should be able to understand. The NY Times, Newsweek and Wall St. Journal have Indexes of about 11, high school level.
Some bureaucratic, academic and corporate prose gets up into the high 20s, or even 30s. Graduate school level and beyond. Often way beyond.
In my science classes, and later in my filmstrip, video and DVD productions I often used low fog quotes to make a point. Here are a few favorites.
“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Anonymous
“Green’s Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.” Buckminster Fuller.
“Everybody lies; but it doesn’t matter since no one listens.” Anonymous.
Cal Coolidge was famous for keeping his mouth shut. When he was introduced to a famous football star of the Chicago Bears, however, he became more loquacious. “Nice to meet you, young man. I’ve always liked animal acts.”
“A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillion of infidels.” Walt Whitman.
“An artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist” Eric Gill.
“When a man brings his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.” Piers McBride.
“Oh God, if I am to have so much … let me have more.” Walt Whitman.
“The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.” George Bernard Shaw.
“Dare to be naïve.” Buckminster Fuller.
“Hell, if I could explain it to the average person it wouldn’t have won the Nobel Prize.” Richard Feynman after winning the Nobel Prize.
“Don’t always follow the crowd because nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Yogi Berra
“No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers.” J. Scott Armstrong.
“It has been for me a glorious day, like giving sight to a blind man’s eyes: he is overwhelmed with what he sees and cannot justly comprehend it.” Charles Darwin on first seeing tropical forests.
“A dog is a dog except when he is facing you. Then he is Mr. Dog.” Haitian proverb.
“Ben Wattenberg’s new book is a compelling reminder that we must learn to bear the truth about our society, no matter how pleasant it may be.” Jeanne Kirkpatrick in a review of “The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong.”
“Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s the day-to-day living that can wear you out.” Anton Chekhov.
Lady Astor once said to Winston Churchill, “if you were my husband I’d give you poison.” Churchill replied, “if you were my wife, I’d take it.”
“I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.” Anonymous.
“I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for 20 years last week and he’d changed so much he didn’t even recognize me.” Piers McBride.
“We all know that no proposition is so foolish or meretricious that at least two Nobel Prize laureates cannot be found to endorse it.” Walter Gratzer.
Richard Feynman on refusing to read his own obituary before his death. “I have decided it is not a very good idea for a man to read it ahead of time. It takes the element of surprise out of it.”
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.” Judge Learned Hand.
In a Sidney Harris cartoon a beautiful maiden is speaking to a hard-working scientist, who is staring at some arcane equations on his blackboard: “I’m your guardian angel and I think it’s time you knew that for the past 37 years you’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”
Bill Stonebarger, Owner/Manager Hawkhill
P.S. Relax, no sales pitch this week. Take down the 4th of July flags but save them for Labor Day. Email me for a free copy of our Fog Index poster which gives more detailed directions for calculating the Index. billjane@hawkhill.com