T8 Assessment 4: Research Assignment

1. What is readability? Suggest 2 useful online readability testing tools. How easy text is to read www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/ www.juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults 2. What are "Gunning Fog" and "Flesch Index" ? The Gunning Fog Index Readability Formula, or simply called FOG Index, is attributed to American textbook publisher, Robert Gunning The Gunning’s Fog Index (or FOG) Readability Formula Step 1: Take a sample passage of at least 100-words and count the number of exact words and sentences. Step 2: Divide the total number of words in the sample by the number of sentences to arrive at the Average Sentence Length (ASL). Step 3: Count the number of words of three or more syllables that are NOT (i) proper nouns, (ii) combinations of easy words or hyphenated words, or (iii) two-syllable verbs made into three with -es and -ed endings. Step 4: Divide this number by the number or words in the sample passage. For example, 25 long words divided by 100 words gives you 25 Percent Hard Words (PHW). Step 5: Add the ASL from Step 2 and the PHW from Step 4. Step 6: Multiply the result by 0.4. The mathematical formula is: Grade Level = 0.4 (ASL + PHW) where, ASL = Average Sentence Length (i.e., number of words divided by the number of sentences) PHW = Percentage of Hard Words The underlying message of The Gunning Fog Index formula is that short sentences written in Plain English achieve a better score than long sentences written in complicated language. The ideal score for readability with the Fog index is 7 or 8. Anything above 12 is too hard for most people to read. For instance, The Bible, Shakespeare and Mark Twain have Fog Indexes of around 6. The leading magazines, like Time, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal average around 11. 3. What are the 4 distinct writing styles? Creative writing. This can be a story, a poem, a play, or anything else you chooses to make up. Creative writing is fun because you can use all of your imagination. Explanation. This is also called expository writing. It is used when the writer wants to share information with the reader. It can be how to put something together or how to solve a problem. Clear writing is the key. The reader of an explanation should come away informed, not confused. Personal essay. This is a written monologue. In a personal essay, you can tell about something you believe in or have experienced. Clear, organized language is still important. Persuasive essay. This is a written way to try to convince the reader that the writer’s opinion is the correct one. It should include examples that support the writer’s opinion. It may also include examples to show why opposite opinions are wrong 4. Describe writing techniques such as drafting, story boarding and name software tools that can assist in these techniques. Drafting: Drafting is the drawing of objects to scale, usually a top view, main view and side view Story Boarding: Graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing Software tools: word illustrator Photoshop excel bubble.us piece of paper 5. What is Active Voice/ Passive Voice and when should you use them? Write a short sentence demonstrating each style. When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice. Example: Active: The army killed the civilian Passive: The civilian was killed by the army 6. What's a Cliché? What are the pros and cons of using them? Cliché : A phrase which has been used too often, and has become meaningless Pros: People understand them quicker Gives the main character significance Easy to form a story line around Isolate the character mentally and physically Cons: Repetitive Sometimes unnecessary Creates lack of care/appreciation Predictable. Boring 7. What's a caption? What's the characteristic of a "good" caption. Find a caption you like and present it here. Include the image. What's a caption? subtitle: translation of foreign dialogue of a movie or TV program; usually displayed at the bottom of the screen provide with a caption, as of a photograph or a drawing brief description accompanying an illustration Good caption: 1. Identify the people who make the photograph 2. Describe what is happening in the photograph 3. Inform where the event occurred, and when 4. Explain the background, if need be 5. It must be written in the present tense Caption The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh lights the lamp to inaugurate the exhibition "The Master's Strokes: Art of Rabindranath Tagore", at National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi on May 9, 2010 – PIB Photo. 8. Suggest formatting/ layout/ typesetting techniques to improve presentation (for any medium). Grid is a set of guidelines, able to be seen in the design process and invisible to the end-user/audience, for aligning and repeating elements on a page Template is more rigid. A template involves repeated elements mostly visible to the end-user/audience. Using a template to lay out elements usually involves less graphic design skill than that which was required to design the template. Kerning and Tracking Alignment Measure Leading Ligatures Rag Widows and Orphans Hyphens, En-dashes and Em-dashes 9. What is the "inverted pyramid" in the context of writing? Most readers have neither the time nor the desire to read every word of every story in a newspaper. By using the summary lead, the JO focuses the reader’s attention on the news, arouses the reader’s interest and allows the reader to swiftly skim important facts. 10. Write 1 example of each of the 3 registers used in writing. Hint Write for your audience: Who is your audience Write for the medium: Less than 20% of users read word-by-word. Most just scan text. Allocate, collaborate and iterate: Get others to read and review your work to ensure that it is clear and conveys an accurate message for its intended audience 11. List 5 things to consider when writing for the web/ screen. Describe how writing for the web differs from traditional writing. Know your audience/ Decide why you are writing/ Headlines /Upper case / Choose the right words Web pages have to employ scannable text Highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and colour are others) Meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones) Bulleted lists one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph) the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion Halve the word count (or less) than conventional writing Credibility is important since it is unclear who is behind information on the Web and whether a page can be trusted High-quality graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links. Links to other sites show that the authors have done their homework and are not afraid to let readers visit other sites. Also, credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates. 12. What does semantics mean in the context of writing html? Why is it important to write semantically correct html? In English, the word semantic means "of or relating to meaning." In the science of linguistics, semantics is more explicit: It's the study of meaning based on the historical and psychological significance of words and terms While the academic study of markup vocabularies can be thought of as a form of linguistics, the real-world practice of marking up documents semantically follows the first definition; in markup, semantics is concerned with the meaning of an element, and how that element describes the content it contains. This issue was always meant to be part of HTML, but the hacking of HTML for presentational purposes made short order of any semblance of semantic purity within the language. Chris, that was hard.....Can we go back to the drawing part!! Vincent