Like every good writer, I'm always looking for new ways to make myself crazy. It's not that I have anything against the old ways of making myself crazy; honed over years of practice, they can be remarkably effective. It's just that, like most other people these days, I find the traditional vaguely embarrassing and crave the new.
Fortunately, Microsoft is there to help me out.
It's fairly well known that most people, most of the time use only a small fraction of the functions of a given computer programme. (You would be surprised to find, for example, that Adobe Acrobat will offer you advice on your love life. The advice the document reader gives tends to make relationship problems worse, but – hey! – I didn't say that all of the unused functions of your computer actually worked well. Expect a patch any moment now...)
I was working with Microsoft Word one day when I stumbled upon one of these functions: the Flesch Readability Statistics page. This screen pops up automatically when you have completed spell checking an entire document...and then asked the computer if you should stay with the person you've been dating for the last three years, because, you know, it feels like the relationship is stagnating and you're sure that you can do better, but, well, you're not 100 per cent sure and –
Anyway.
The page starts with Counts of such things as the number of words, sentences and paragraphs in the document. Save for the shortest pieces of writing, verifying these numbers is so tedious it's unlikely that any writer other than Don DeLillo would be so anal as to do it. In fact, for all I know, the computer pulls the numbers out of its...what's the digital equivalent of ass? Unfortunately, since the rest of the numbers on the page are built from these numbers, you kind of have to accept them.
In the following section on Averages, the programme tells you how many sentences were in each paragraph, how many words were in each sentence and how many characters were in each word. Just looking at this section is a reminder that, while you like to think of yourself as the next Dostoyevsky, you're actually closer to being the next Steele.
The final section, Readability, is the statistical money shot. The percentage of passive sentences is what it starts with (fortunately, I'm secure enough in my masculinity to ignore the implied criticism). This is followed by Flesch Reading Ease, which measures how difficult the text is to read on a scale of 100. Finally, there is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which measures exactly what it says it does.
The formula for determining the Flesch Reading Ease scale is: arbitrary number minus (another arbitrary number times the average sentence length) minus (yet another arbitrary number times the average number of syllables per word). If you find that formula suspect, rest assured that the formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is completely different: (arbitrary number times the average sentence length) plus (another arbitrary number times the average number of syllables per word) minus yet another arbitrary number. Of course, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level "rates text on a US school grade level." To see how it would work for any other country, you would have to multiply by one more arbitrary number (but at least you get to pick this one yourself).
I have complete faith that these formulae can accurately reflect the complexity of my writing.
One day recently, I was feeling antsy but not really ballistic, so I put my latest book, Alternate Reality Ain't What It Used To Be, through the Flesch grinder. The book's score for Flesch Reading Ease was 56.5; according to the programme, a writer should aim for a score of 60 to 70. As I understand this, Alternate Reality Ain't What It Used To Be should be read by people whose IQs are somewhere between moron and below normal.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade for Alternate Reality Ain't What It Used To Be was 9.6. I assume this means that it is appropriate for readers in the ninth grade who have failed at least one of their first term tests. This depressed me, until I read that a writer should "for most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0." The fact that my book was written at a grade nine and a half level, and that that was aiming too high, depressed me even more.
I keep telling myself, "It's only a Flesch wound. It's only a Flesch wound." However, thanks to Microsoft, I have come face to face with the truth that I am not the sophisticated writer I always thought myself to be. That has to be the case, right? After all, numbers don't lie.