Tongue Twister Tamed
Here’s the intro to an article published by a great, big law firm:
In a recent high profile US case, a large securities firm had to pay out millions of dollars in settlement to the US equivalent of the Financial Services Authority because the firm had not disclosed copy emails in arbitration claims because they thought they were no longer in their possession as their computer servers had been destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Whew! That tongue twister contains 63 words, has a a singular/plural disagreement (the firm/they), and scores a miserable 7.2 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale. The large securities firm isn’t identified, and the reader is left wondering what “copy emails” could be.
If an intro is to inform readers what an article is about and to encourage them to continue reading, then this intro fails.
So . . . what might a skilled and experienced editor do with this intro? Perhaps this:
Morgan Stanley was ordered to pay $12.5 million to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the U.S. equivalent of the Financial Services Authority, because the firm failed to produce e-mails during arbitration claims. The large securities firm had claimed that the e-mails were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The number of words has been reduced by better than 20%, and the edited intro scores 21.4 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale. The mysterious firm is identified, as is the governmental agency that fined it, meaning that the article is much more likely to be found by those searching for it. And it’s much more likely to be read.
