Comments on: Readability Tests

By: Danny Goodall

Danny Goodall — Wed, 11 May 2011 08:54:45 +0000

These indexes give a good indication of the structural complexity of a sentence but don’t actually try to gauge how difficult it is to understand arcane concepts like technology acronyms and abbreviations. I’m developing an “Arcanicity Index” that rates how technically obscure a piece of text is.

Nice site BTW Joe.

Dan.

By: Danny Goodall

Danny Goodall — Mon, 09 May 2011 07:17:08 +0000

Joe, do you know of any readability index that looks at the level of technical or domain-specific knowledge required to interpret the text? I’ve developing something myself but I’d rather use something that already exists. I want to look at the density of the acronyms and abbreviations in a given text and give the text a rating based on the results. The rating would describe how much knowledge would be required to interpret the text.

Cheers,

Dan.

By: Sue

Sue — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:54:42 +0000

Oh dear, James Hutton comes out at 39th grade reading level!

By: Jodie

Jodie — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:03:01 +0000

my website was analized to be -37.4! No wonder people click of after 2seconds!

By: Kaz

Kaz — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:59:16 +0000

I put in Lucky’s monologue from the play Waiting for Godot and got a reading ease score of -628. Sounds about right.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:45 +0000

I’m wondering if I should be horrified at the results I had when I tested a piece of my own writing. The results were the following: the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease score is 78.1, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level is 5.8th grade, the Gunning Fog index is 8.5, the Coleman-Liau index is 7.2, the SMOG index is 6.4, the automated readability index is 3.8. I am a writer, so it is crucial that my reading audience has the ability to easily understand what I have written. However, I personally feel less intelligent now that I have discovered how…simple my writing is. On the other hand, I have tested a published and very popular novel, and to my surprise the scores were lower, with the Flesch-Kincaid grade level at fourth grade. Despite my personal misgivings I must say that this is truly useful, as long as the person using it has a clear understanding of the meaning of the numbers.

By: Maya

Maya — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:49:30 +0000

This is really helpful! I’m a seventh grade student and my classmates frequently have trouble understanding my work- I get why now!

By: Robyn O'Connor

Robyn O'Connor — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:20:36 +0000

Thank you. This is so helpful in grading texts students are reading. Even though the grade levels don’t relate to Australia, it is still easy to determine if students are reading material that is easier or harder. I can be confident that students are receiving texts that are more challenging than the last one. I use this often.

By: helloworlder

helloworlder — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:18:34 +0000

Sorry, last post but I absolutely had to post THIS one:

“if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race”

- James Hutton

By: helloworlder

helloworlder — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:14:55 +0000

For your convenience here is a paragraph by James Hutton:

“the world which we inhabit is composed of the materials, not of the earth which was the immediate predecessor of the present, but of the earth which, in ascending from the present, we consider the third…. Here are three distinct successive periods of existence, and each of these is, in our measurement of time, a thing of indefinite duration”