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One of my students in the post graduate design law classwhich I teach has sent me an abstract of their proposed paper, which contains the following - <<Apart from the sophistry surrounding characterisation as a work of artistic craftsmanship, the existence of such a category introduces a de facto criteria of artistic achievement into judicial evaluation which obviates against the requirement that copyright protection should not be based on perceived artistic merit. This paper recommends a normative shift from current statutory preoccupation with differentiating "art" or "craftsmanship" from "design" to an analysis of industrial purpose. It is suggested that the monopoly or protective tenure extended by copyright law becomes contentious where it subverts the legitimate manufacture of useful articles. It is through the mechanisms of mass market induction that a creative work may be seen to transcend the paradigm of artistic work.>> Given that it is part of good legal style to write clearly and concisely, how should I respond bearing in mind that the rest of the abstract is in similar style? jj
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Given that it is part of good legal style to write clearly and concisely, how should I respond bearing in mind that the rest of the abstract is in similar style?"Talk English, boy!" (or girl)  Actually I'm very impressed at the writer's ability to churn out so many grammatical sentences containing a good variety of words, and yet consistently evade any discernible meaning. You could consider entering this for Pseud's Corner, JJ: http://www.private-eye.co.uk/pseuds.htmMy favourite ever entry was someone writing about Leonard Cohen, included on the sleeve notes for one of his more recent albums. Must try to find that on the Web.
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And I also meant to ask whether someone could point me to th index that I know exists for readability, being a mathematical function of number of words per sentence, syllables per word, use of non-anglosaxon words, etc. Now what is it called??
jj
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didn't realise Private Eye was on the net. Glad to see its as funny as it used to be...
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Pooh-Bah
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I think you should simply hit the writer in the face with a sock filled with wet mud. Preferably cold, wet mud, and stinky.
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index that I know exists for readability
In MS Word there's a Flesch Reading score.
If the same people devised tests for the edibity of foods you'd have Flesch Eating scores.
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old hand
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Your mention of the Flesch score inspired me - here are the results of running it through WordPerfect's Grammar check readability analysis. http://maxqnz.com/readability.html I thought the last was particularly damning.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Flesch Reading score.
There's a couple others, too. Don't remember them offhand and this defective Mac Word won't show them to me.
It's not entirely, grammatical, BTW. Specifically: a de facto criteria? Word suggests either drop the a or change to a de facto criterion
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old hand
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>Word suggests either drop the a or change to a de facto criterion
WordPerfect suggested changing to criterion or replacing "a" with "some".
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Pooh-Bah
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Ask him if he wishes to have it copyrighted as a work of artistic merit, or would he prefer to see it patented as being a useful article.
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"Actually I'm very impressed at the writer's ability to churn out so many grammatical sentences containing a good variety of words, and yet consistently evade any discernible meaning."
This is really good!
I'm not familiar with the usage "obviate against" in the student's text. The idea seems worthwhile and even simple, if the words could be untangled.
k
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How do you access this function in Word?
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In Word click on Tools/click on Options/select the Grammar and Spelling tab/click the Show readability statistics box. Go back and run a spelling and grammar check.
The Flesch Reading Ease is on a scale of 0-100. The higher the score the more readable it is. Minimum scores of about 60 or 70 are desirable. The Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level is the minimum grade lavel required to have any hope of making sense out of the text and represents number of years of formal education attained. This thang scored a Flesch Reading Ease of 9.1 and a Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level of 12.0.
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May I humbly suggest a style problem in the poster's first sentence. One....sent....their paper.
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Pooh-Bah
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In reply to:
May I humbly suggest a style problem in the poster's first sentence. One....sent....their paper.
I guess you mean the apparent disagreement between the singular "one" and the plural "their." We had a long discussion on this awhile back, concerning the use of "their" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun alongside "his" and "her." Anyone have that link?
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Carpal Tunnel
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We had a long discussion on this awhile back, concerning the use of "their" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun alongside "his" and "her."
Y'all know where I'd stand on this issue, so I'll just stay out of it. Y'all can take my comments as read.
FWIW, MSWord 2000 doesn't seem to have caught this one.
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Ask him if he wishes to have it copyrighted as a work of artistic merit, or would he prefer to see it patented as being a useful article.
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enthusiast
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May I humbly suggest a style problem in the poster's first sentence. One....sent....their paper.
unless one student, representing the group, sent in a communal paper written by the whole class
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Thanks, Faldage. Another computer-related addiction takes wing tonight.
WW
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Out of curiosity, I entered a poem that had no punctuation. It's readability was 0% and its grade level was 0%, too.
For the record,
WW
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I fed it that old Mad Magazine classic:
It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.
The spell checker wondered about rozzer but I got a Flesch Reading Ease of 86.7 and a Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level of 3.6.
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>The spell checker wondered about rozzer but I got a Flesch Reading Ease of 86.7
My WordPerfect, with its default language set to UK English, acceptd rozzer without blinking and gave it a Flesch score of 96.
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Flesch Reading Ease of 86.7
Flesch score of 96.
And I thought the Flesch thangie was just based on word count/sentence length and word length. Must is they's different in UK English nor what they is in USn English.
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Probably been warned off by the rozzers.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Immediately require the student to obtain and read "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White before writing another word!
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