How Readable is Your Writing

[rvm45]

Friends.

Here is an article that tells you how to make use of one of your "Word" features to tell you what grade-level that you're writing at.

Here is the site:

www.quora.com/How-readable-is-your-writing/answer/Nebojsa-Todorovic-8

And this is the chart:

Grade 4 100+ 9 to 10 years of age

Grade 5 90 10 to 11 years of age…………. Most Comic Books

Grade 6 80 11 to 12 years of age…………. Harry Potter

Grade 7 70 12 to 13 years of age…………. Large chunks of "The Writer's Website"

Grade 8 65 13 to 14 years of age…………. Most of Obama's Speeches

Grade 9 60 14 to 15 years of age…………. BBC News Website

Grade 10 50 Start of College………... "The Financial Times"

Grade 11 40 End of College…………. Most of Shakespeare

Grade 12 30 University Level………. "Harvard Law Review"

You have to have your writing on a "Word" Document.

Go to "Review."

Go to "Spelling and Grammar."

Now this is tedious as all Hell. You have to go through every single instance where "Word" thinks that you've either misspelled a word or screwed up the Grammar. You CAN choose to leave it that way, but you have to review every case…

And then you get your score to compare to the chart.

Several of my stories ranked between 68 and 74. I was a bit surprised, because I CHOOSE as a stylistic device to use some obscure words…


Yeah, I'm running "Word 2011" on a MAC. Your Grammar score may not be in precisely the same place—look a bit.

I can't say that this changed my writing any at all—but it was amusing—and reassuring.


…..RVM45

[papaof2]

I avoid sites that want me to log in to read what they offer. Also those who cover the screen with a "You must log in" banner. Until I've seen what you have to offer, I'm not interested in getting on another mailing list or being included in some vendor's Facebook list.

Of this, I shall remain ignorant.

[papaof2]

Word for Windows back as far as the 2003 version has a "Reading Level" that can be activated as part of the Grammar and Spell Check function. Probably also true for the other platforms.

[willc453]

Damn, didn't know there was a reading level AND word counter available to do this.

[papaof2]

Jan 7, 2020 17:33:08 GMT -6 willc453 said:

Damn, didn't know there was a reading level AND word counter available to do this.

Under "Tools" in Word 2003 for Wordcount, Grammar and Spell check plus Options to get to Readability.

The free packages (Libre Office, etc) have similar but not identical menus.

[solo]

Oh Boy... I just did the Word 2016 review of my current work and the ease of reading score was 85.8... Standard is 60-70...

And my grade level of understanding was 3.8... So someone who is almost finished with third grade and about to enter fourth grade can understand my writing...

I AM NOT SURE HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS.........

[papaof2]

Jan 31, 2020 13:03:31 GMT -6 solo said:

Oh Boy... I just did the Word 2016 review of my current work and the ease of reading score was 85.8... Standard is 60-70...

And my grade level of understanding was 3.8... So someone who is almost finished with third grade and about to enter fourth grade can understand my writing...

I AM NOT SURE HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS.........

Your writing can be read and understood by the mainstream population, maybe even some of the semi-literate fringes such as AOC ;-)

Most of my stories are in the range of 4.2 to 4.8. Not something I aim for, but likely to be the case when people are talking about common things in words of three syllables or less. It's also possible that the more words you use that Word (or whatever) doesn't know, the higher the score is likely to be. Be different if the people in the stories were talking about the detailed engineering of an Outback solar charge controller, a jet engine or the turbine wheels at Hoover Dam. Those conversations would likely have enough "big" words to raise the grade level.

The document on the design, construction and testing of my "Wait until daylight" solar backup system has a grade level of 11.1 so I can write "high brow" or at least "technical" ;-) You might expect a higher grade level in a document that's 126 pages, 57,031 words, contains multiple charts and images and takes almost 7MB of disk space. It's probably dense reading for most people but if you want the nuts and bolts of how I built the system and things to watch for if building your own system then it might not put you to sleep.