PrettyArbitrary

ivyblossom:

This writing sample analyzer takes a sample of your writing and then calculates the number of sentences, words, and characters in your sample. As it’s calculating these statistics it makes estimates as to how many syllables are present in each word. Using these numbers, it then calculates the Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which are three of the most common readability algorithms. 

Ivy’s been fascinated with this thing lately, and now she’s got me stuck on it. I’ve always been iffy on how seriously I should take these scores. Some linguistic scholars seem to think they’re gospel, while others consider them crap, but the Flesch-Kincaid scale is what many people use to calculate the ‘readability’ of published books (‘4th grade reading level’ etc). It seems to find me quite readable. I plugged pieces of a bunch of different stories into it, and came out consistently around a 4th-5th grade reading level. Then again, I tried loading Shakespeare’s Tempest into it, and it thought he was around a 2nd-3rd grade reading level. Well, yes. Once upon a time. When people still colloquially spoke that way. I’m not sure I can believe in a test that doesn’t take vocabulary into account. Though I’m not sure how you could do that beyond counting syllables.