'The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
“Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station’s coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
The business manager's memorandum fails to provide a convincing and compelling argument for the return of local news and weather over national news on the late-night program. Rife with baseless assumptions, the argument does not provide specific examples, figures, or numbers to bolster the author's point of view. The business manager's argument thus quickly falls out of favor unless supplemented with additional compelling arguments.
The author states that most of the complaints arise from those agitated with the lack of local news and weather. However, the author fails to provide any numbers which may make the author's suggestions more plausible. No numbers or even percentages exist when discussing these complaints. While 50,000 complaints may make the station's executives more likely to validate the author's argument, four complaints may only serve the purpose of causing a good laugh. Facts and figures must be provided for the complaints to carry any weight. Furthermore, the memorandum only states that "most" of the complaints are regarding the local news and weather. Whether the actual percentage is 51% versus 99%, would definitely factor into the station's decision to restore more local programming.
The business manager also implies a sort of guarantee that advertisers who have previously discontinued their use of the station's programming would return if the local programming was restored. This argument, however, remains only a baseless assumption without the backing of a survery or poll. A poll taken among these former advertisers would carry quite a bit of weight with the program's executives, given that a significant amount of the advertisers had agreed to resume their services if they local news and weather programming were restored. The memorandum fails to provide proof of this, further weakening the author's overall argument.
Without a survey among all advertisers, former and current, determining the effects on the station are nearly impossible. Current advertisers may be larger, more widespread companies aiming at a national audience, rather than localities. If the station returned to more locally focused programming, it could cause current advertisers to become disinterested in pursuing the business manager's suggestions. The risks greatly outweigh the benefits without in-depth market research in regard to the advertisers, especially without a guarantee that former advertisers would return to paying for ads during the program.
The author of the memorandum does not provide sufficient evidence, research, or numbers to back up the suggestions brought forth. The station's executives would be taking an uncalculated risk in following these suggestions without further proof of their benefits.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 414 350
No. of Characters: 2290 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.511 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.531 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.848 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.086 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.065 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 14, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
The business managers memorandum fails to provide a convincin...
^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 327, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...the authors point of view. The business managers argument thus quickly falls out of favo...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 374, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... executives more likely to validate the authors argument, four complaints may only serv...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 131, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... back up the suggestions brought forth. The stations executives would be taking an ...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, however, if, may, regarding, so, thus, while, sort of, in regard to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 8.0 19.6327345309 41% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2347.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 414.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.6690821256 5.12650576532 111% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51076378781 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95311860121 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.521739130435 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 709.2 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.4171982457 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.35 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.7 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.3 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.208895579462 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0668710267133 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0873942928314 0.0701772020484 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.11664154309 0.128457276422 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.058648107847 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.61 12.5979740519 124% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.79 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.