Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
The following issues are looked at:
• Reading level
• Sentence length
• How much to put into one sentence ("chunking" information)
• Organizing information
• Redundancy
• Overuse of a word
•Jargon
• Accents and speech patterns
• Avoiding a "heavy-handed" style
• Assessing how well your text reads
ENSURING THAT READING
LEVEL IS APPROPRIATE
"Reading level" refers to the number of years of formal education
required by a reader in order to fully comprehend a piece of writing.
No matter how well written a document is, it will fail in its fundamental
task of communication if it is so challenging that its intended
audience cannot understand it. On the other hand, if it is written
at too junior a level, readers may become bored or feel patronized,
and may either put it aside or take its content less seriously.
In some genres of writing, the concept of reading level is critical,
the most obvious being school texts and children's books. (Children
of the same age naturally exhibit a wide range of vocabulary and
reading skills, but the averages are known.) In the case of adults,
reading level is usually less of an issue but still must be kept in mind.
For example, a writer would obviously present the same information
differently in a professional journal and in a popular magazine, or
in material aimed at a Ph.D. crowd versus a group of high school
dropouts.
Objective determinations of reading level look at two factors: the
number of words in a sentence and the number of syllables in a
word. Strategies exist that can help you translate these numbers
into a useful measure. The Fog Index, used in educational publishing,
is easy to apply manually. Pick a random hundred-word chunk in
your document (you may want to do this with your eyes closed, to
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