Caught an advertisement for GenerationNext in the debut issue of Red County. When I read the copy, I had to run it through Bullfighter, a terrific software application that analyzes text to cut through buzzwords and bull to see if what you wrote is clear and easily comprehended by the reader.
GenerationNext’s Mission Statement gets a mixed grade. Here’s the statement followed by the analysis:
Generation Next PAC is a network of young business and community leaders committed to making a difference by empowering individuals and causes to provide long-term solutions that will better our individual and collective futures. Our forward thinking and cutting edge approach, combined with our extensive resources, provide a platform for advocates who represent the right-of-center voice of the Next Generation of Americans.
Diagnosis: You like to hear yourself write. Despairing of the thought of bringing a sentence to a close with something as demeaningly ordinary as a simple period, you shower readers with gratuitous, interminable and often weighty if not impossibly labyrinthine prose. Meaning lingers, albeit awash in a thick tide of metaphor and exposition that threatens to drown the writer’s message. Seek help.
I think sarcasm doesn’t always come through in bits and bytes; Bullfighters descriptions are almost parodies of the text it analyzes.