The BlaBlaMeter and the fight for lean, mean text

The editorial team at JIPLP has made known its preference for clear, no-nonsense text and has been quite interventionist in its pruning of formalistic padding from submissions before publication.  It is therefore with interest that they view a website which calls itself BlaBlaMeter.  The rubric on BlaBlaMeter's front page explains as follows:
"PR-Experts, politicians, ad writers or scientists need to be strong here! 
BlaBlaMeter unmasks without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text. 
A useful tool for everyone involved in writing! 
Simply copy your text into the white field and check your writing style. It works with English text up to 15,000 characters (overhead will be cut off). For a meaningful result we recommend a minimum length of 5 sentences".
This facility -- with which JIPLP has no relationship and which it does not endorse -- apparently rates text in English, German and Spanish. It has been tested out by solicitor and JIPLP contributor Mark Anderson for his IP Draughts weblog. You can read his comments here.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the mention, Jeremy. I ran the above article (other than quoted text) through the BlaBlaMeter and it received a very respectable score. To quote the BlaBlaMeter:

    Bullshit Index :0.11
    Your text shows only a few indications of 'bullshit'-English.

    Better than Sir Robin Jacob but not as good as Lord Denning (as mentioned in my blog posting). Not a bad place to be!

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