Word '08 vs. Word '04 Readability Statistics

[Ed]

Is there a bug in the way Word 2008 handles the Flesch Reading Ease
Score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score?

I've just checked a document I wrote in Word 2004. It has a Flesch
Reading Ease Score of 58 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score of 8.0
according to the Word 2004 spelling and grammar checker. This same
file in Word 2008 has a Flesch Reading Ease Score of 100 and a Flesch-
Kincaid Grade Level Score of 0.7 (whatever that means).

I very much doubt that these scales have changed. So is Word 2008
correct? If it is not, why does this get through Microsoft's quality
control? Office 2008 does not really seem ready for release. You'd
think 4 years would be sufficient.

Ed

 

[CyberTaz]

Yessir - this is a known issue. There's a service pack due 3/11 which *may*
include a fix but as yet we really don't know.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Ed]

Yessir - this is a known issue. There's a service pack due 3/11 which *may*
include a fix but as yet we really don't know.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

Thanks, Bob. Somehow I'm no longer optimistic that Microsoft will fix
this and other problems.

Ed

 

[CyberTaz]

Aw - Don't be so pessimistic Believe it or not MacBU is keenly aware of
the shortcomings of 2008 but for any number of reasons they were unable -
not unwilling - to provide a better initial offering. They are working quite
diligently to make what improvements they can as quickly as possible. There
is certainly no guarantee that *everyone's* concerns will be *completely*
satisfied as promptly as we'd prefer, but you may be pleasantly surprised in
the not too distant future... Keep the proverbial "stiff upper lip"

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

{Ah hem...} The service pack is due on March 11th, not 3/11

Yessir - this is a known issue. There's a service pack due 3/11 which *may*
include a fix but as yet we really don't know.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

Huh???? Would you prefer 11/3? I'm not seeing your point.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Bob:

My point was that in 189 of the 190 countries in the world that comprises
our audience, we thought you said November 3rd

Cheers

Huh???? Would you prefer 11/3? I'm not seeing your point.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Ed]

Hi Bob:

My point was that in 189 of the 190 countries in the world that comprises
our audience, we thought you said November 3rd

Cheers





--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group.  Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltdhttp://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia.  S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

The new upgrade is out. Unfortunately this bug has not be
exterminated. I'm still amazed that Microsoft would release this
program with such poor fit and finish. And, it took them 4 year for
this upgrade.

Ed

 

[Ed]

Hi Bob:

My point was that in 189 of the 190 countries in the world that comprises
our audience, we thought you said November 3rd

Cheers





--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group.  Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltdhttp://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia.  S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

The new upgrade is out. Unfortunately this bug has not be
exterminated. I'm still amazed that Microsoft would release this
program with such poor fit and finish. And, it took them 4 year for
this upgrade.

Ed

 

[merffot]

The service pack did NOT fix the problem. It is quite annoying for those of
us who write and rely on the statistics to help us improve our documents.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Think seriously of passing your view on to Microsoft (see the Help menu).
In this group we are only users of Microsoft products.

Clive Huggan
============

 

[John McGhie]

You are quite correct, it didn't. Because you do not have it yet

It's due any minute, but it has not been released yet. Microsoft has never
properly resolved the names of the 'patches' it puts out. No software
company is ever going to call them "Patches" or "Fixes" because that draws
attention to the fact that they goofed

However, Microsoft calls them a variety of things and it's difficult to know
what you are getting. The industry recognises three kinds:

"Hot fix"

"Update"

"Service Release"

A hot fix is an emergency repair to get customers out of a problem that is
causing data loss or damage. That is what we just had, and it was
identified as "12.0.1". The first two digits indicate it applies to "Office
12" which is Office 2008 to Marketing Department. The second digit is 0,
which indicates that no major changes were made, and the third digit went
from 0 to 1 to indicate that this was the first.

An "Update" is a more extensive fix. It will update the middle digit. And
it will apply to more than one component in the software. That's the one we
are waiting for.

A "Service Release" collects all of the updates and hot fixes that have
applied since the software was released to market, so you only have to apply
one patch to fix everything. The coming update will be one of those.

And it will fix the Readability Statistics.

I suppose this is a bad time for me to suggest that the Readability
Statistics have been universally discounted as a useful piece of information
by scholars who know a lot more about English than I do? (And I write books
for a living...)

It is easily possible to write English that tests very well in Readability
Statistics and yet remains almost unreadable But I guess that's a
discussion for another forum

Cheers

The service pack did NOT fix the problem. It is quite annoying for those of
us who write and rely on the statistics to help us improve our documents.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]