[markomalley]

When I heard this earlier, I recognized on a commercial business perspective, that is actually a high compliment.

From the Plain Language at Work Newsletter:

Literacy and the reading habits are of major importance in communicating with your audience. A document may be "plain" for one set of readers and not for others. Writers often wrongly assume that their audience is of the same class of readers.They are often surprised to learn that very large numbers of readers cannot read what they have written.

The first literacy surveys in the U.S. done in 1935, showed that the average reader was an adult of limited reading ability. At that time, when the average reading level was 7.8, equivalent to readers in the eighth month of the seventh year in school. The reading levels have remained consistently the same over the years, showing slight improvement each year.

The National Adult Literacy Survey in 1992 and 2003 showed the following results:

The results show the average adult reads at the 9th-grade level. This accounts for the fact that the popular blockbuster novels are written at the 7th grade level. People like to read recreationally two grades below their actual reading skill. The average newspaper is written at the 11th-grade level, the tolerable limit for a 9th-grade reader.

And this 2004 study shows:

Adults have different levels of reading skill. The National Adult Literacy Survey shows that the average adult in the U.S. reads at the 7th grade level, with nearly 50 percent below the 6th grade level and over 80 percent below the 10th grade level.

Experts recommend that documents for the general public be written at the 7th-grade level. Documents about health, medicine, or safety should be written at the 5th-grade level. Documents for special groups can be adjusted according to their reading skill and the purpose of the document.

For those of us who have to speak and write to a wide variety of audiences in a business setting, we understand that our speech and writing must be adjusted so that the majority of our audience will easily and comfortably understand us.

So when I heard about this earlier in the day, I actually gave The Donald credit: he seems to understand the above basic communication concept very, very well.

Even though I'm not a Trump fan (I'm not a fan of any of the candidates at all), I have to give credit where due!

[Robert A Cook PE]

Funny. Obola is considered such a verbose, stunning orator. Until he loses his teleprompter.

[mowowie]

oh that’s it then, guess i HAVE to vote hillary now....

[acoulterfan]

I am sick of all the attorney politicians.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And yet everybody understands him just fine.

It's the parse-speak of other candidates the people are baffled by.

[Secret Agent Man]

Better tham Obama’s.

If he was a democrat they would say its an advantge, he can relate to average people and illegals much better.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

This is it! Trump’s poll numbers will tank now, I tell ya!

[EagleUSA]

“...grammar is more elementary than that of other candidates.”

Good. Maybe the average low-information, low-IQ voter can understand his message better than that of Obama, for example. So far, the delegate count says so.

[PGalt]

Grammar police say Trump is disqualified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U

HOORAY citizen Trump

[SkyPilot]

Trump Speaking in a Posh British Accent

[Springman]

Bump for later.

[digger48]

Or they could talk like John Kerry and use 1000 lofty words in perfect prose and still end up saying nothing

[stocksthatgoup]

No Ebonics?

[SoFloFreeper]

yeah, he so dumb he laugh all way to bank

[afraidfortherepublic]

I’m glad that someone besides me has noticed — finally. For someone who brags about his “brain” and his “fine education” he demonstrates the worst command of the English language that I have ever heard. It’s not even 4th grade. More like 2nd grade, although I have grandchildren (some as young as 3) who are more articulate.

[sheik yerbouty]

Much better than 0bola..

[RC one]

Donald isn’t a talker, he’s a doer.

[Katya]

Absolutely true! Trump also uses advanced persuasion techniques... see Scott Adams blog, including easily repeatable phrases, and adjectives that stick. Bernie Sanders is also quite good at this...but he has no media savvy. I’ve posted this before... but I live in a blue Maryland next to blue DC... I use cabs. I’ve had many cabbies of color who have repeated Trump phrases to me... including a black female uber driver.

[Riley]

I’m a Cruzer, but will pull for Donald if he’s the nominee.

I’m voting for a leader, not someone to teach people’s kids English. Next bogus, empty election-cycle criticism, please.

[Fester Chugabrew]

As long as he can spell P-O-T-A-T-O-E it’s all good.

[kiryandil]

I just found out why there aren’t any nekkid pictures of Anna Giaritelli ...