readability scores

[Felice Albala]

--Geoffrey Marnell wrote: 
A few years ago, on some forum or other, I read that some employers of technical writers expected their writers to always meet or better a particular Flesch readability score. Is anyone currently subject to such a demand (or has been in the recent
past)? If so, what justification was given for it?--

I am a pharmaceutical tech writer, working here in the pharma corridor of New Jersey. While I normally consult as a validation TW, I took (and left) a permanent position a couple of years ago at one the Big Pharma companies as a Medical Program Documentation Specialist writing Informed Consent Forms to be given to prospective participants in clinical trials. The docs could have no more than a 6th grade Flesch-Kincaid score (which was quite difficult, considering the medical terminology involved) and the docs would go through many iterations with Managers' instructions to "dumb it down." The purpose was to make sure participants understood as best they could all the details of the clinical trial, and of course, to protect the Company against lawsuits.

Felice Albala