1.	Though you monitor annual reports produced by corporations around the world, not once have you found a "foreign" report to be poorly written. True or false? Answer: False. By coincidence, Bahrain Telecommunications Co. had a letter (though it did not exceed our arbitrary lid of five pages) that warranted none of a potential 10 points. Its excessive average words per sentence, 29.5, combined with an excess of complicated words (resulting in a fog index of 14.51), cost it all 10 points for writing. And won it the dubious honor of being the year's hardest-to-read shareholder letter.
	2.	While others sing the praises of the General Electric shareholder letter, year after year you have harsh words for it. True or false? Answer: Well, both true and false. This year's GE letter ran a page over our five-page lid. And the report overall scored poorly—but 68 of a potential 135 points (the year's 10th best report, for example, had a score of 120 points), along with a meager 2.8% Cato Positive Index. That indicates it contained precious few of the three dozen elements that I maintain comprise a good annual. Yet, evaluation of its letter to shareholders showed one of the year's five best readability scores. So it was hailed—and properly so.
	3.	After all these years of advocating companies use 11-year financial data in their reports, finally the message is getting out; companies at last comprehend why you advocate this. True or false? (By the way, why is it you're so adamant concerning use of 11-year data?) Answer: False. Only one in five corporations worldwide publishes 11-year data, necessary for analysts and others to calculate a 10-year compound growth rate. Besides, use of 11-year data indicates a company is indeed going the extra mile to communicate its story.
	4.	Despite your soapbox, few if any bother with a theme for their annual report. And fewer still support it forcefully throughout the book, as you advocate. True or false? (What's the big fuss over running a theme, anyway?) Answer: False, clearly. Two of three companies today receive credit for proclaiming a theme for their annual, and on the report cover, as advocated—up from one in four among 1987 reports. Nearly four of five today forcefully support their theme. Why a theme? To (1) help keep the producers of said document on target throughout the six-month (average) process and (2) give the reader a handle, a feel for what the professional communicators are attempting to communicate.
	5.	Fewer and fewer CEOs refer to themselves with the first-person pronoun in their shareholder letters, your advocacy notwithstanding. True or false? Answer: False. Today, more than half the world's CEOs (53.7% to be exact) refer to themselves as "I." That's up from 32% first year monitoring this element was begun—a nearly 63% increase since 1989 annuals.
	6.	You bandy about a "Big Three"—or "bottom-line three." What's that mean, anyway? And isn't it true few achieve it? Answer: The bottom-line three: (1) did the report appear attractive, the minimum, it would seem; (2) did it demand readership, as every daily newspaper and weekly or monthly magazine does, and (3) is it credited as "reflecting well" on the company whose name is on the cover? Sadly, but 13 reports, or 5.6%, for 2001 achieved that standard. Still, that's substantially better (double, to be exact) than the 2.8% among 1999 annuals, for example. It's greater, even, than the 4% among 1998 annuals, making this the best year in the 18 years these elements have been monitored.