The following appeared in an announcement issued by the publisher of The Mercury, a weekly newspaper:
“Since a competing lower-priced newspaper, The Bugle, was started five years ago, The Mercury’s circulation has
declined by 10,000 readers. The best way to get more people to read The Mercury is to reduce its price below that of
The Bugle, at least until circulation increases to former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract
more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The argument claims that the best way for “The Mercury” to gain more readers is to reduce price below that of “The Bugle”, resulting in more circulation and further culminating into more advertising business. Stated this way, the argument manipulates facts and presents a distorted view of the situation. It fails to state many important facts necessary to evaluate the argument.
First, it assumes that the reason for the reader’s switch from “The Mercury” to “The Bugle” was the price difference and factors such as the quality of content and printing paper was the same at both “The Mercury” and “The Bugle”. This statement is a stretch because the author gives no reason to believe that price is the only motivating factor in such a movement from one newspaper to the other. For example, It maybe a case that the more prominent journalists with considerable followers had moved to “The Bugle” and therefore, “The mercury” was struggling to maintain its quality of editorials. Clearly, the author has resorted to leap of faith and poor reasoning to justify his claim. The argument could have been more convincing if it stated something which signified a causal relationship between the price reduction and switching of the readers.
Secondly, the argument claims that readers will not churn to “The Bugle” again after the relevant readership targets are met and they will continue their subscription with “The Mercury”. This again is a poorly reasoned argument as it is highly probable that actions of “The Mercury” are likely to invoke a price war in the industry. For example, After “The mercury” reduces its price to below “The Bugle” offer price, “The Bugle” may further reduce its price so as to avoid losing customers. In response, “The mercury” may have to further undercut its prices so as to meet target circulation levels. Undoubtedly, such a situation could be detrimental to both the players. The argument should have mentioned something around the likelihood of industry wide price war for it to be deemed reasonable.
Finally, the argument fails to answer questions such as whether there are only two players in the industry. It might be the case that despite “The Bugle” undercutting prices, “The Mercury” readers have not switched to “The Bugle” but rather to a third competitor and Whether the drop in circulation revenue due to lower prices of “The Mercury” will be adequately compensated by the increased advertising revenue. Without convincing answers to these questions, one is left with an impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than a substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the claim is flawed and therefore unconvincing. It could have been fairly strengthened if it mentioned relevant facts such as studies from industry analysts stating that the reason for drop in readership was indeed price and the readers will not switch back to “The Bugle” after prices for “The mercury” are dropped. In order to assess the merits of a situation, it is important that all relevant facts to the argument are presented. Without this, It could be argued that the claim remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 519 350
No. of Characters: 2546 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.773 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.906 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.645 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 184 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 145 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.775 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.476 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.52 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 520, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...ugle' may further reduce its price so as to avoid losing customers. In response, &a...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 630, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...may have to further undercut its prices so as to meet target circulation levels. Undoubt...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, as to, for example, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2868.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 519.0 441.139720559 118% => OK
Chars per words: 5.52601156069 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7730044521 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.13516903261 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 233.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.44894026975 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 873.9 705.55239521 124% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 29.0 8.76447105788 331% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 75.9912275639 57.8364921388 131% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.571428571 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.7142857143 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.61904761905 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.240552827445 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0818840350859 0.0743258471296 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0870321952843 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.175563512453 0.128457276422 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0387190354682 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.0 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.09 12.5979740519 120% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.75 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 129.0 98.500998004 131% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.