Frying your language

Not deep frying...although French fries are delicious

Apr 27, 2025

A while back, I was told to “fry” a piece of text. I had no idea what that was: do I have to bread it first?

The Fry readability formula is what people talk about when they discuss what grade level someone can read at, and what grade level a piece of text is.

“Formula” here is a dirty word, one that makes it sound like I’m solving for a square root. And there’s a chart I’ll show later that’ll also scare you away: that’s why I’m not showing it to you right away.

But don’t be scared! Ignore the chart! Frying is very simple. And it might help you in how you communicate, or how to think about how you communicate.

Step 1: grab a piece of text 100 words long or so.

Step 2: count the number of syllables. The more syllables, the higher the reading level. (If your count is under 100, you did it wrong: every word has at least one syllable in it.)

Step 3: now count the number of sentences. The more sentence, the lower the reading level.

Here’s an example piece of text, based on this new trailer. Mild spoilers!

I can’t wait for the new Fantastic Four movie; it’s about time we finally got a good one – though does Incredibles count, since it’s the 1960s and there’s a stretchy parent? Anyway, Galactus is finally showing up as a big Brobdignagian Godzilla-sized threat, not just a toxic cloud. I mean, c’mon, lean into the cheese; if you’re going to show Galactus threatening to eat Earth, go whole hog and show a gargantuan purple dude in a gargantuan purple hat. And why does he always start eating Earth in Manhattan? Go eat an uninhabited island and no one will even notice until you’re on your third course.

That’s 107 words, close enough to 100.

And it’s 5 sentences long.

I can’t wait for the new Fantastic Four movie! It’s about time we finally got a good one! Though does Incredibles count, since it’s the 1960s and there’s a stretchy parent? Anyway, Galactus is finally showing up as a big Brobdignagian Godzilla-sized threat, not just a toxic cloud. I mean, c’mon, lean into the cheese! If you’re going to show Galactus threatening to eat Earth, go whole hog! Show a gargantuan purple dude in a gargantuan purple hat. And why does he always start eating Earth in Manhattan? Go eat an uninhabited island and no one will even notice until you’re on your third course.

This is essentially the same piece of text (two words shorter, in fact), except now it’s 8 sentences long. That makes it easier to read. All the ideas of the piece are there – woo, look at me patting myself on the back about my highfalutin’ ideas talking about an upcoming Marvel movie. And I didn’t have to remove big words like Brobnignagian or Gargantuan – which both just mean “big.”

There’s something called “cognitive load,” which is the amount of brainpower it takes to understand something. Ever go nuts trying to read Ikea directions, or stress out when someone’s explaining the rules of a new board game? That’s you reaching the limit of your cognitive load.

We all think we like to be mentally challenged, but we don’t. We’re looking for the easiest way to do things. When’s the last time you microwaved something for two minutes by hitting 2 and then 0 and then 0, rather than hit the ADD 30 SECONDS button four times? Four button presses in a row was quicker that the very mild cognitive load of moving your fingers across the keypad.

When you listen to someone, you’re doing the same thing. It’s easy to become hypercritical of every aspect of their communication: how slow they talk, their choice of words, restarting the sentence to get it right, restarting over and over, dancing around a topic rather than making a statement, etc. “I asked you what sort of soda you wanted: we’re now three minutes into a conversation and I’m standing here with the fridge door open and a Coke in one hand and a Sprite in the other, and please just get to the point so I can give you one and put one back!”

And time for a hard, hard pill to swallow: everyone’s doing it to us when we talk. It’s your turn to talk and you know exactly what you’re going to say, and not blabber on like the other people, the blabber people. And then you say “uh…I was, uh, well, I was going to, uh, well what I meant to say was that I, uh was going to begin to, uh, going to begin to tell you about this, well now it seems uninteresting, but what I was going to begin to say was a story I heard about—” and all this time inside your mind you’re mentally screaming at the part of your brain that’s talking to just say it, just say it and then stop talking!

When we write, we’re able to avoid so much of that social awkwardness!

However, we still have a duty to reduce to cognitive load of others! The way we love it when others reduce our cognitive load by being clear and concise. Have a 17-words sentence? Is there a way it would still work as 15 words? Do you need to repeat words?

One last piece of text.

Can’t wait for Fantastic Four: First Steps! Though does Incredibles count as an FF film, with its 1960s vibe and a stretchy parent? Anyway, Galactus is finally portrayed as a Brobdignagian threat, not just a toxic cloud. Yes, lean into the cheese! If you’re going to show a purple dude threatening to eat Earth, go whole hog! And why does he always start in Manhattan? Eat an uninhabited island, and no one will notice until the third course!

This new version reads very similarly to the previous two pieces of text. But now there’s the actual title of the FF movie.

And it’s 78 words, not 105.

I’ve shaved 26% of the words out of the paragraph. Very few of them were attached to ideas: I actually added a few ideas. (Again, we are talking the “ideas” of watching a trailer for a superhero film: it’s not Shakespeare.)

***

Want to know a secret about yourself that you may not know?

You think in semicolons, not periods.

Your train of thought is a series of long connected clauses, some directed linked to the one before, others that don’t connect for minutes or even hours. (If ever!) That’s how we think: one endless train of thoughts, with new cars joining the train and others beign dropped off at stations, but the enegine rarely idling.

And when we brain-dump our first thoughts onto a page, that’s often what comes out. It was all connected up there, so why doesn’t it work when it’s connected down here?

Up in your head is exhausting; I know it’s exhausting up in mine. I don’t want to show my brain’s output as is, like some WE SELL UGLY HOUSES fixer-upper! Like some “as is” used car I can’t even bother to remove the Burger King wrapped from! I want to clean it up! Remove the excess junk! Show off the nice parts, the socially acceptable parts. Run a vacuum through your thoughts and throw the dirty socks in the hamper. Put the dishes away and discard the supermarket circular you’re using as a coaster. Otherwise, to quote Truman Capote, it’s not “writing” but “typing.”

Here’s that chart that makes you go running out of the room. You count the words, and the syllables, and the sentences, and you find your number. For many companies, the goal is to make it a sixth-grade reading level. This is tough, because look how big the seven-grade chasm is.

How to Score Your Text with the Fry Readability Graph – ReadabilityFormulas.com

The easiest way to simplify text involves breaking big sentences into little ones. Same ideas. Just many small sentences. Sentences like these. This paragraph would Fry like an onion ring, crisp and delicious.

You can “cheat” the Fry system by picking 100-word chunks with already short sentences. And by using acronyms: “DNA” is a lot easier on the eyes than “deoxyribonucleic acid,” and they mean the same thing. And by putting your text in bullets

Bulleters lists draw attention
They’re easy to read
They’re sequential
Makes it seem like something good will happen at the end
Sometimes they just trail off, like that one time I

But the more you look for ways to game the system, the more you think in terms of the system. And the more you start using short sentences with short words to make your point. It’s not cheating, anymore than “smuggling in the answers to the test by memorizing all the possible facts on the quiz” is a cheat. That’s learning!

Your words may not be as poetic or beautiful, but were you trying to be poetic or beautiful? Were you maybe just trying to be understood?

If so, then the more people who can understand you the better. So Fry your text up! And start thinking in short, clear words!

PRINCESS LEIA OF THE WEEK

Weve had Lego week and Cosplay week but not LEGO COSLAY WEEK!