The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.
"Several recent surveys indicate that homeowners are increasingly eager to conserve energy and manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy-efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, we anticipate that the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase, and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past 20 years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants should not be necessary." - GRE Argument 93
The author of this memo concludes that there is no need for an additional electric power plant in the area because total electricity demand in the area is not likely to increase in the future. To support this conclusion the author cites the availability of new energy-efficient appliances and systems for homes, and the eagerness of area homeowners to conserve energy. However, the argument relies on several doubtful assumptions, and is therefore unpersuasive as it stands.
First, the author's projection for flat or declining total demand for electricity ignores business and commercial elect...
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 480 350
No. of Characters: 2573 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.681 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.36 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.018 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 144 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 118 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 78 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.263 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.996 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.366 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5