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"When Numbers Get Serious": A Study Of Plain English Usage In Briefs Filed Before The New York Court Of Appeals, Ian Gallacher
"When Numbers Get Serious": A Study Of Plain English Usage In Briefs Filed Before The New York Court Of Appeals, Ian Gallacher
Ian Gallacher
This article describes the results of a study of briefs filed in the New York Court of Appeals between 1969 and 2008. In particular, portions of these briefs were analyzed using the Flesch Reading Ease test and the Flesh-Kincaid test. The first of these tests claims to determine how "readable" a piece of text might be, and the second expresses its results in terms of the grade level a hypothetical reader should have attained before the given text becomes "readable." Both of these tests are fallible, especially when used to determine the actual "readability" of a piece of text, but …