Reply to comment about "Readability formulas, programs and tools: Do they work for plain language?"

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Submitted by Tom Vradenburg on July 26, 2022, at 9:19

Gael is bang-on about this. I wish everyone comms would let go of this notion, that Grade 8 is some kind of gold standard for general-public communications. If you've never tried, getting most texts down to Grade 8, unless they were written for children or young adults in the first place, is linguistic limbo dancing.
Plain language now focuses on what's appropriate for the particular audience for each particular comms product.
There is no known algorithm that can substitute for the mantra "audience, medium, purpose" and a careful edit with those things in mind.
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