If you are like me, then you enjoy groaning at Rosie DiManno’s columns in the Toronto Star.  I discovered something fun.  For those of you unfamiliar with Rosie DiManno, she is a columnist at the Toronto Star, and formerly of the Toronto Sun.  The columns that she writes are sensational, and chock full of cliches, suggestive language, and stuff that borders on libel.  I read her columns when I feel like I don’t have a good enough reason to pull my hair out and scream “what the devil is wrong with people?!?!?!”

I had originally sent this to a friend, but then thought I would post this here, too.

1) take the text from a column, ex http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/729370–dimanno-disdain-for-u-s-led-to-afghan-torture-fiasco;

2) paste text for Flesh-Kincaid / other readability tests at http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp;

3) read analysis and LOL. Last time I tried this out, the grade level was like 4, so the fact that the readability varies so much from column to column is rather telling.

Best: at the bottom of analyses there are suggestions under the heading “List of sentences which we suggest you should consider to rewrite to improve readability of the text :” Effectively, this is a tool that auto-selects the worst parts of Rosie’s writing, and isolates them into tidbits.

Example: “That was the original sin, as has become ever more evident, because Afghanistan is nowhere near ready, all these years on from the 2001 invasion and ouster of the Taliban regime, to administer itself.”

WTF

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 2:40 am and is filed under BRAIN EXPLODES NOW., Geeks, Mass media is wack, Rosie DiManno. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.