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Fog Index : Education
1 - 8 : Elementary School
9 - 12 : High School
13 - 16 : Post-secondary School

1. Select Written Sample
Pick a continuous piece of writing of approximately 100 words.

2. Determine Average Sentence Length
Count the number of words and sentences in your sample. Divide the total number of words (N) by the number of sentences (S) to determine average sentence length:

N / S = ASL

3. Determine the Number of Hard Words
Gunning defined a "hard" word as one with three or more syllables.

• Count a hard word only once if it appears multiple times in your sample. If a hard word appears in various forms (-s, -es, -ed or -ing) count it only once.
• Count four (or more) syllable compound words like undercover or anybody.
• Do not count proper names or initials (Kathy E. Gill is two words but nothing is counted); acronyms (USDA is ignored also); or abbreviations (WA), alpha-numeric strings (1600 Pennsylvania Ave.) or common symbols.
• Do not count three-syllable compound words like bookkeeper or afternoon.
• Do not count two-syllable words that end with -s, -es, -er, -ly, -ier, -ily.

4. Calculate the Percentage of Hard Words
Use this formula and round off your answer to the nearest tenth:

100 x H / N = PH
where H = number of hard words
where N = total number of words
where PH = percentage of hard words

5. Find the Gunning's Fog Index
Gunning's final formula:
0.4 (PH + ASL) = Gunning's Fog Index

With all of the frenzied punditry and hoopla surrounding the last episode of "Friends," is it really possible to know -- or care -- how we feel about the show's leaving the air after 10 years? Complicating matters is the fact that this season of "Friends" has been alarmingly awful, far worse than you would ever imagine a show that was once so good could be.

It's not surprising, then, that last night's final episode was not only predictable but seemingly interminable. Packed though it was with Big, Life-Changing Events, the finale still felt like a half-hour show pointlessly stretched out over the course of an hour.

N = 103 - did not count "Friends" or "10" - episode counted once
S = 4
ASL = 103 / 4 = 25.75
H = 12
PH = 100 x (12 / 103) = 11.65
0.4 (11.6 + 25.8) = 14.96

Midway through "Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life," psychologist Daphne de Marneffe's provocative but thoughtful new book about motherhood as a cornerstone of female identity, she mentions that a friend told her that "every time she sees a new book about mothers, she feels mingled dread and hope as a question instantly pops into her mind: Is it for me or against me?"

De Marneffe's book is singular in that it isn't polarizing. While she took about five years off from her therapy practice to raise her three children, and a chunk of her book is devoted to discussing the authentic, oft-ignored pleasures of primary caretaking, she doesn't order her working-mother readers to go home and enjoy it, like she did.

N = 110 - did not count title or name
S = 3
ASL = 110 / 3 = 36.7
H = 13
PH = 100 x (13 / 110) = 11.8
0.4 (11.8 + 36.7 ) = 19.4

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