Writing Clarity Index Calculator
About This
Tool (below)
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Beta: Try the new clarity
calculator here
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Enter 180-200 words from an e-mail or report into this box, and click the button to see how clear you are being. If using an e-mail, ignore hello and goodbye lines (e.g. "Hi Christina," and "Bye for now, Britney")
Note: A more advanced version of this tool is available here.
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About This Tool
The Clarity Index is a tool that was developed by the
US Army to encourage personnel to be more clear with
their writing.
In
the business/academic world, the Clarity Index is an amazingly simple way of checking if you are making things
too
complicated, or if you are being too abrupt.
It
does this by using a combination of the average words
per sentence (aim for 15) and the percentage of
your total text that are "long words" (aim
for 15%).
The actual calculation is a bit complicated - and can take more than a minute to perform if you do it manually. This tool takes just seconds.
Copy
a chunk of text - e.g. part of an e-mail or a report,
between 180-200 words - and you will see the Clarity
Index. Aim for 20-40, with 30 being ideal.
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