See David. See David Write. Write, David, Write.

My day job consists of writing copy to help patients understand their medications and how to take them. As my audience ranges from the semi-literate to the college prof, it's best if we write to a grade 4 or below. The lower the grade, the higher the reading comprehension, even among the super-literate mooks like you.

This morning I learned how to test my copy. It's simple. If you write in Word, check tools, then options, then hit the spelling and grammar tab and check readability statistics.

So of course I had to run my WIP through the grinder to see how it measured up. Understand that this is a fairly ambitious book that deals in some complex themes (or so I tell myself) and here's what I got:

Averages:

1.8 sentences per paragraph.

10.6 words per sentence.

4.2 characters per word.

1% passive sentences (yay!).

Reading ease 85.3

Grade level 3.9

That's right, I'm writing

for dim 9-year-olds.

So how about you? Run your mss through the Word reader and as always...

...talk to me.

I have cross-posted this to Crimespace.