I couldn't resist this one: when I was looking for a link for Pears' Dream of Scipio I landed on the Amazon.com website, where I was given a box with the statistics of the book. Things like the number of words, the number of pages, number of sentences etc, and...its complexity rating (11%, if you are interested).
"The Complexity calculations indicate the complexity of the words and sentence structure in the text of a book. A word is considered "complex" if it has three or more syllables."
Three or more syllables. Oh my god. That means that syllable is a complex word. And complexity, wait a minute, that's got four syllables.
Can nobody read anymore? And am I the only one who in this index detects a note of disapproval with all this 'complexity' business in books? Deary me. What is the world coming to? I'm now doing my impression of Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old men in the Muppet Show.
[Mind you, I can't write, as an anonymous reader pointed out earlier: peal is what bells do, and if you've got an orange, then you can peel it.]
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