The Gobbledygook Grader

I decided to go ahead and run a draft press release through the HubSpot Gobbledygook Grader, which I had mentioned in a post earlier this week on, well, use of goggledygook words.

I was tempted to review the press release ahead of time to purge gobbledygook words, but held myself back. So I was pleased to find that I only used one in the draft: the word optimize.

With only one bad word, I was shocked to find I got a grade of 45 out of 100. Harsh! But when I looked at the full report, I realized that they were looking at more than word usage. The material that I cut and pasted into the grader was just the “guts” of the release  - I wanted my client to focus on the content, not on the surrounds. So I omitted things like contact info and boilerplate (”About”), didn’t have the ### at the bottom, and only had one link (there should be at least three).

These are all things that I would have taken care of in the “real release” - honest and truly. But it was a good reminder that these things are essential. I will definitely run my final copy through the grader, but I reserve the right to keep the word “optimize” in there. It really does have meaning for the electronics engineers this product is aimed at. But I will check to see if I can be more specific about what we’re talking about optimizing.

I also learned that reading my release requires at least 2 years of college, info that I’ll pass on to my client, as I know this will both interest and amuse him.

Anyway, the grader’s fun and definitely worth checking out.

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