In Treatment

I watch this HBO original series and am consistently impressed by how well written it is, and how great a job all the actors do.    I watch the show because I think the show puts on center stage many changes that are occuring within the American culture.   Of course I also like understanding the ‘why’ behind peoples actions…

http://www.hbo.com/intreatment

Tribal leadership

So, one of the unclear ideas that has been bouncing around in deep–almost subconscious recesses–of my brain was this idea that my leadership skills had anything to do with my background, which very much includes having experienced depressing environments and phenomenal teamwork.  Well, this TED talk by David Logan on the idea of ‘Tribal Leadership’ has helped me understand the value of my experiences and how it helped make me the person that I am.

A Fog Index < 21

Apparently (I read somewhere) you don’t want a Fog Index score greater than 20 if you are giving a speech to a live audience.  This is important to those of us that feel we should write as if we were going to read our writing to a live audience, because this implies our writing should also have a Fog Index score not greater than 20.

The Fog Index is a type of readability test for your writing that essentially indicates how long–on average–your sentences and words are.   The longer the words and sentences, the more difficult it is for readers to read, and the higher the score will be.

If you want a quick tool that calculates multiple readability tests (including the Fog Index) for your writing, check out:    The Readability Test Tool.