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A few Flesch benchmark scores

Before you ever send a news release to a media outlet, know what its average Flesch score is. If your subject is a complicated one, you need to be sure that they will be able to write about at their normal level. How do you that? You give it to them above their normal level.

At the bottom on this list are four of the most famous speeches in American history. All understood the value of using short words whenever they could.

Harvard Law Review 25 Written by brainiacs, for brainiacs
Time Magazine 47

Hard for more than half the potential readers

Typical daily newspaper 50 Seattle Times average
New York Times 52 Easier to read and understand than Time magazine
Fortune magazine 53 Written at high school, not college level
Wall Street Journal 57 Easier to read than the NY Times!
Barron's 65 Financial news made easy
Reader's Digest 65 Simple info-nugget approach
American Banker 60 Good for someone in about 11th grade
Information Week 59 Tech trade skimps on big words
Wireless Week 55 Despite content, easy to read
Builder 62 Easy to read
Vineyard & Winery Management 61 A toast to simple reading

A few great speeches
and other items

JFK's "Ask not. . ." speech 60 Yes, but the famous "Ask not. . ." quote scores a Flesch 100
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 64 Speech was only 268 words. The other speaker that day droned on for 3,500. No one recalls anything he said.
MLK's "I have a dream. . ." speech 66 Speech inspired a generation of African-Americans.
Obama's inaugural speech 73 Shows that smart people can look that way just by using words that are simple and mostly just one syllable.
Top 10 fiction books 83 James V. Smith Jr.'s research revealed that the books that sold the most to adults were written at a 4th grade level.

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