Are You Overlooking this Simple Readability Tool?
Do you want to improve your chances of receiving an acceptance letter instead of a form rejection in response to your query letters? Of course you do …
How? Simply mirror the readability of the magazines that you’re submitting queries to.
Developed by Robert Gunning, an American businessman, the Gunning-Fog Index is one of the methods used to measure the readability of a passage of English text. The resulting number is an indication of the number of years of formal education that a person needs to easily understand the text on the first reading. For instance, if a passage of text has a Gunning-Fog Index of 12, it has the reading level of a U.S. high school senior, an 8 would indicate that a U.S. 8th grader could easily understand the passage.
Writers and editors who want their articles, stories or essays to be easily understood by a large segment of the population commonly use the Gunning-Fog Index. Texts that are designed for a wide audience generally require a Gunning-Fog Index below 12.
Typical Gunning-Fog Indices of some popular magazines:
12 — Atlantic Monthly
11 — TIME
10 — Newsweek
9 — Reader’s Digest
8 — Ladies’ Home Journal
7 — True Confessions
6 — Comic books
Calculating the Gunning-Fog Index
The Gunning-Fog Index is calculated in the following way:
- Take any passage of text that is around 100 words.
- Find the average sentence length by taking the number of words in the passage and divide by the number of sentences.
- Count the number of complex words, words with three or more syllables, within the passage. Do not include proper nouns (for example, Ravikant), compound words or common suffixes such as -es, -ed, or -ing as a syllable, or familiar jargon.
- Divide the number of complex words by the number of words in the passage and multiply by 100. This will give you the percentage of complex words. For example, 8.3%, not .083.
- Add the average sentence length and the percentage of complex words.
- Multiply the result by 0.4. This result is your Gunning-Fog Index, your readability.
While the index is a good indication of reading difficulty, it still has limitations. Not all multi-syllabic words are difficult. For example, the word “engineer ” is generally not considered to be a difficult word, even though it has three syllables.
While I can’t guarantee that by simply matching your article’s Gunning-Fog Index to that of the magazine you’re querying will result in an acceptance letter. I do feel confident saying that if you thoroughly analyze your magazine market, including its Gunning-Fog Index, you’ll begin to receive more acceptances than rejections.
Here’s an example. This passage of text is from an article that ran in INC. MAGAZINE, March 2008:
LIKE so MANY technology entrepreneurs, Williams, whose friends call him Ev, is a software engineer. But unlike many of the most successful, he’s no genius when it comes to programming. His specialty is taking a tiny, almost nonsensical idea and turning it into a cultural phenomenon. “He’s like a master craftsman,” says Naval Ravikant, a serial entrepreneur who is an angel investor in Twitter. “There are entrepreneurs who are financial geniuses, and there are raw coders. Evan is the master of creating a product where there wasn’t one before.” If Williams’s art is the conception of inconceivable products, then Twitter is his chef-d’oeuvre.
- The passage contains 103 words and is 7 sentences long. 103 divided by 7 gives us an average sentence length of 14.7 words.
- It contains 16 complex words (in italics). 16 divided by 103 equals 0.155. Multiply that by 100 gives us 15.5% complex words
- Adding 14.7 (the average sentence length) to 15.5 (the percent of complex words) gives us 30.2.
- Multiply 30.2 time 0.4(constant) gives us 12.08, or a 12 grade reading level.
Simple, once you’ve calculated a few.
So, the next time that you’re sending out a query, match the text of your letter with your magazine market and let me know when you get your acceptance letter. I’ll be cheering for you!
Until next time …
No day without a line.
My 14 Point Query Letter Checklist
Have you ever paid any attention to the return envelope utility companies send you in their billing statements? The next time that you sit down to pay your bills, look at the back of one of the envelopes. There’s a good chance that you will see a checklist of things to do before mailing back your bill so that your account gets properly credited with your payment. Have you:
- Enclosed payment portion of your statement?
- Enclosed check for your payment?
- Completed return address area?
It’s the simple things that often get overlooked …
Anyway, I have a similar checklist that I review before I mail any query letter out to an editor. My checklist includes:
- Have you addressed the editor by name? - No “Dear Sirs” here!
- Have you included a Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope (SASE)?
- Have you included a phone number where you may be reached during the day?
- Have you listed your prior publications?
- Have you included clips? - If you got them include them. Don’t mention it if you don’t.
- If photos are available, have you mentioned it in your query?
- Have you stated the length of your proposed article?
- Did you mention your working title?
- Have you included a list of possible sources, whom will you interview?
- Have you spell checked your query?
- Have you grammar checked your query?
- Have you stated how long it will take you to have the completed article on the editor’s desk?
- Is your query only one page long, on white, 81/2” x 11” paper?
- Have you included a strong “call to action?” – For example, “I hope this topic interests you, and I look forward to your response. If you would like to see the article, I can have it on your desk within two weeks of receiving your acceptance.”
If you can answer “Yes” to these 14 points, your query letter has a good chance of being read and seriously considered by an editor. If you answered “No” to even one point, you need to go back and revise your query before you mail it out.
Until next time …
No day without a line!
Want to Improve Your Chances of Getting Published?
Follow the Rule of 12. Simply stated the Rule of 12 is, you should have at least twelve query letters in circulation at all times. That’s right, you should have twelve query letters on editor’s desks at all times.
Now having twelve queries in front of editors is a bit scary, because that opens you up to lots of rejection. And, while it’s part of being a freelance writer, being rejected is hard. On the other hand, having twelve queries making the editorial rounds will have a tremendous and positive impact on your success as a freelance writer.
How? You’ll get better at writing query letters - a good skill for any freelance writer. You’ll receive more acceptance letters. And, since you’re receiving more acceptances, you’ll earn more money. Now that may be over simplified, but I think you get the point. As Tony Robbins says, “Massive action will yield massive results.”
Getting to the point where you have twelve query letters out will take some time. Set a goal for yourself. Try to send out two or even three query letters every week until you have twelve in circulation.
Once you have twelve queries out, one of two things will happen. One, you’ll receive a rejection letter. In that case review your query to ensure that it is clear and concise and send it out to another editor. Two, you’ll receive a go-ahead for the article. In that case, write another query letter and get it in the mail or email, within 24 hours if at all possible, and get to work writing the article.
In time you’ll find that you are receiving fewer and fewer rejection and receiving more assignments. Congratulations on your assignment.
Until next time …
No day without a line.
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