Word: flesch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Guerrilla warfare against legalese is busting out all over. For example, the Federal Trade Commission has assigned Language Expert Rudolf Flesch, author of several books on plain English, to redraft some ordinarily impenetrable regulations. Joseph Califano has recently hired Barnard College Political Scientist Inez Smith Reid to improve and simplify Health, Education and Welfare Department prose. Among other agency heads arguing for brevity and clarity, Interstate Commerce Commission Chairman Daniel O'Neal last spring issued an exhortation stating: "English is a remarkably clear, flexible and useful language. We should use it in all our communications...
Both Nationwide and Sentry first offered the policies in Pennsylvania, where early this year a regulation went into effect, requiring that auto-insurance policies must rate at least 40 on the Flesch Readability Scale. That scale, which ranges from 0 to 100 for the maximum possible brevity and simplicity, was devised in 1943 by Language Expert Rudolf Flesch (The Art of Readable Writing). But not until "we entered the age of consumerism," says Flesch, did business realize that "to have documents written by lawyers isn't good enough. because the consumer isn't satisfied...
...plain-language requirement for health and accident policies. The new federal Pension Reform Act insists that company booklets be written "in a manner calculated to be understood by the average participant." And the new federal Warranty Law states that product warranties have to be "simple and readily understood." Linguist Flesch cautions that most of the rewrites do not yet rate a 60 on his scale-the level, he says, of the New York Daily News or SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. But be it hereinafter understood that whereas the aforementioned and previously established methodology of contract composition has been adjudged dull and devoid...
...overemphasis on phonics instruction, though, can make some children miss the meaning of the words they sound out. Recalling Rudolf Flesch's 1955 pro-phonics polemic, Why Johnny Can't Read, Harvard Education Professor Jeanne Chall, a phonics authority, quips that "soon I can expect to see a book out called Why Robert Can't Understand...