What We've Come To - The Gilmore Guide to Books

This is one more reason why comic books are now called graphic novels or “sequential art”. And why I despair for the future of mankind.

Advice to writers:

WRITE BELOW THE 8th-GRADE LEVEL. Some writers worry that this may insult their readers’ intelligence. In reality, no one complains that something is too easy to understand. Studies show that writing below the 8th-grade level achieves the best results. Your readers are not dumb; they just don’t have time to process and recall complicated messages. *Editorial: if they can’t process or recall information then they are dumb. Or lazy. Or both.

Here’s how to check the readability of your writing when using MS Word: Under “Tools” click “Options” and then “Spelling & Grammar.” Select the “Check grammar with spelling” box and the “Show readability statistics” box then click “OK.” The next time you complete a spell check, it will display information about the reading level. If the “Flesch-Kincaid grade level” is above 8, edit your document to make it easier to understand. *More editorial: So we’ve designed SOFTWARE to help people write for lazy people.