Really, the fact that yours is “high school” translates to something like post-doctorate level with that funky formula they use. I’ve seen some brilliant blogs get ratings like “middle school.”
Jules: I posted on something like this a while back. If I were blogging only, say, once a week instead of almost every day, I’d love to spend time working up a parody of these quizzes — probably just a bit more programming-type activity than I’d prefer to do here, though. :)
Wasn’t there something awhile back that analyzed the comprehension/literacy level of the presidential candidates’ conversations during the debates? I think they hovered around the 7th-9th grade level. So hey, high school is way up there!
Readability is much better if it’s high school level (and should be what all novelists shoot for). The text stats feature on Amazon (for books that have it) show that most books target a reading level between 9th-11th grade (Gladwell’s Blink has a 9th grade reading level per Flesch-Kincaid).
Anything higher than that and your writing begins sounding like a graduate-level dissertation.
Sarah: Unfortunately, there’s no known statistical analysis tool to determine the actual comprehension of the candidates themselves, vs. the comprehensibility of their utterances. :)
Sprizouse: You inspired me to look around a little more for something duller than a flashy image, but maybe more believable. Found one such at the Juicy Studio site: a true readability analysis, including the Flesch index and Gunning Fog Index.
For RAMH, it says the Gunning Fog index is 7.76, which puts it somewhere in the range between “TV guides” and Reader’s Digest; a Flesch Reading Ease score of 75.34 (“Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70”), and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score of 4.65. (The latter is the familiar “reading level” — how many years of schooling it takes to read etc. etc., ranging 0 to 12.)
This seems good, but then I looked closer at the stats, e.g. “Total sentences: 432; Total words: 3306.” Which tells me with close to 100% certainty that the Juicy Studio test, at least, analyzes only the home page (including all the posts broken in two by “more…” links).
Still, like “Dick Butkus,” “Juicy Studio” is an awful lot of fun to say.
Yet I wonder at “readability”. Putting the Bible and Reader’s Digest in the same range makes me suspect their idea of “readability.” What version of the Bible are they using? And by readable, do they mean comprehensible? Are we talking the begats (comprehensible but dull) or the Rapture? Readable maybe, but comprehensible???? Am I missing something?
About a year ago Steven Berlin Johnson did a cursory examination of sentence length in non-fiction books that definitely deserves more in-depth study. It was a very interesting post nonetheless.
His diagnosis for non-fiction work is likely spot-on. For fiction however, I think the sentence length could be skewed drastically in many different directions since one word sentences like ‘hello’ etc. will bring down the avg (especially for writers like Elmore Leonard… whereas a Virginia Woolf is likely to be much higher).
Still, Johnson’s post is worth looking over (at least I thought).
Thanks for the Juicy Studio link. And yes, I did know about the lack of an apostrophe in Finnegans Wake (I actually read the first 100 pages before I started beating myself over the head with the book in a failed suicide attempt).
Sarah: Juicy Studio cited a Web usability consultant’s statistics for typical readability levels. On the same level as the Bible, they list TV guides (not “the” TV Guide magazine, presumably) and Mark Twain.
Sprizouse: Much better (probably) than the Juicy Studio Juicy Studio Juicy Studio test is the one here. You don’t feed it your blog’s basic URL but that of its RSS feed; this enables the program to walk back through your site’s entire archive of posts.
I say “probably” because it’s been chugging through this site’s archives for a couple hours now, so who knows. ;)
Okay … so I got Genius Level … and a sneaky little plug for some other site hidden in the code. But, being a genius and all *preen* I took it out. I’ve heard about the Gunning Fog Index before, but there’s way too much numberin’ and figgerin’ involved for this particular genius.
moonrat says
uhhh, mine’s junior high. so.
John says
moonie: Now see, that’s just not fair. I think somebody inverted a fraction in that formula, or something.
Jules says
Really, the fact that yours is “high school” translates to something like post-doctorate level with that funky formula they use. I’ve seen some brilliant blogs get ratings like “middle school.”
Odd, little test.
John says
Jules: I posted on something like this a while back. If I were blogging only, say, once a week instead of almost every day, I’d love to spend time working up a parody of these quizzes — probably just a bit more programming-type activity than I’d prefer to do here, though. :)
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving!
Sarah says
Wasn’t there something awhile back that analyzed the comprehension/literacy level of the presidential candidates’ conversations during the debates? I think they hovered around the 7th-9th grade level. So hey, high school is way up there!
Sprizouse says
Readability is much better if it’s high school level (and should be what all novelists shoot for). The text stats feature on Amazon (for books that have it) show that most books target a reading level between 9th-11th grade (Gladwell’s Blink has a 9th grade reading level per Flesch-Kincaid).
Anything higher than that and your writing begins sounding like a graduate-level dissertation.
John says
Sarah: Unfortunately, there’s no known statistical analysis tool to determine the actual comprehension of the candidates themselves, vs. the comprehensibility of their utterances. :)
Sprizouse: You inspired me to look around a little more for something duller than a flashy image, but maybe more believable. Found one such at the Juicy Studio site: a true readability analysis, including the Flesch index and Gunning Fog Index.
For RAMH, it says the Gunning Fog index is 7.76, which puts it somewhere in the range between “TV guides” and Reader’s Digest; a Flesch Reading Ease score of 75.34 (“Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70”), and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score of 4.65. (The latter is the familiar “reading level” — how many years of schooling it takes to read etc. etc., ranging 0 to 12.)
This seems good, but then I looked closer at the stats, e.g. “Total sentences: 432; Total words: 3306.” Which tells me with close to 100% certainty that the Juicy Studio test, at least, analyzes only the home page (including all the posts broken in two by “more…” links).
Still, like “Dick Butkus,” “Juicy Studio” is an awful lot of fun to say.
Sarah says
Yet I wonder at “readability”. Putting the Bible and Reader’s Digest in the same range makes me suspect their idea of “readability.” What version of the Bible are they using? And by readable, do they mean comprehensible? Are we talking the begats (comprehensible but dull) or the Rapture? Readable maybe, but comprehensible???? Am I missing something?
Sprizouse says
About a year ago Steven Berlin Johnson did a cursory examination of sentence length in non-fiction books that definitely deserves more in-depth study. It was a very interesting post nonetheless.
His diagnosis for non-fiction work is likely spot-on. For fiction however, I think the sentence length could be skewed drastically in many different directions since one word sentences like ‘hello’ etc. will bring down the avg (especially for writers like Elmore Leonard… whereas a Virginia Woolf is likely to be much higher).
Still, Johnson’s post is worth looking over (at least I thought).
Thanks for the Juicy Studio link. And yes, I did know about the lack of an apostrophe in Finnegans Wake (I actually read the first 100 pages before I started beating myself over the head with the book in a failed suicide attempt).
John says
Sarah: Juicy Studio cited a Web usability consultant’s statistics for typical readability levels. On the same level as the Bible, they list TV guides (not “the” TV Guide magazine, presumably) and Mark Twain.
For what THAT’s worth!
John says
Sprizouse: Much better (probably) than the Juicy Studio Juicy Studio Juicy Studio test is the one here. You don’t feed it your blog’s basic URL but that of its RSS feed; this enables the program to walk back through your site’s entire archive of posts.
I say “probably” because it’s been chugging through this site’s archives for a couple hours now, so who knows. ;)
maggie, dammit says
I got Junior High.
I don’t wanna talk about it.
John says
maggie: I know no mother likes hearing this, but perhaps all that time you’re spending with the wee ones is starting to affect, um, well, you know…?
Tessa says
Okay … so I got Genius Level … and a sneaky little plug for some other site hidden in the code. But, being a genius and all *preen* I took it out. I’ve heard about the Gunning Fog Index before, but there’s way too much numberin’ and figgerin’ involved for this particular genius.
John says
Tessa: Ha! Evidently they underestimated your geniushood in one direction, overestimated it in another, and just took an average.
Tessa says
@John – Why, thank you John . . . I think . . .
John says
Tessa: Ha ha — I couldn’t resist, given the I edit my own HTML and way too much numberin’ and figgerin’ halves of your comment. :)