[Magdalen] For those of us US'ers (& maybe even Canadians)...

[ME Michaud]

One of the many hats I wore while working was as a "plain language"
specialist. We wrote patient information in "plain language," which isn't
far from a fifth-grader's comprehension.

But I'm not sure that reading level (or reading comprehension) figures into
the current election cycle. After all, almost NOTHING written is coming out
of the Republican campaign that's not a tweet.

BTW, every once in awhile I'd have to interact with some half-educated old
trout who'd decry the fact that we had to "dumb down" patient info. I had
little patience with this, reminding them that patients are actually
usually SICK and so not operating at full capacity. Illness, anemia,
chemotherapy, anxiety, disorientation, pain (physical & existential), grief
and terror stalk hospital corridors and take a real toll on people's
ability to read, mark & inwardly digest.
-M


On Sat, Jul 30, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well, I don't know if it's still true, but some years back I read that
> newspapers basically wrote at a fifth-grade reading level, because that was
> the average adult reading level in the US.
>