What’s Your Readability Score?
Jul 6th, 2009 by Reading and Writing
Is your writing consistent?
Being consistent helps your readers understand your messages, and gives them an appropriate level of expectation. These are important considerations in all business writing projects.
Using a readability index is the quickest and easiest way to bring a strong measure of consistency to your writing. A readability index measures how easy it is to read and understand what you’ve written. Normally, it’s measured in grades, as in Grades 1 through 12 in North American high schools.
For example, the original draft of this article scored 9.08 on the Flesch Kincaid Grade level index. In other words, a person with a Grade 9 education should be able to understand it. Other indexes might give a different score, but generally they will be in the same range.
It costs nothing except a bit of your time to get readability tests. Start by checking your word processor. If it doesn’t include one, check online. Simply visit your favorite search engine and type in the words “online readability” or “online readability tests”. You should find a number of them.
Most scoring programs and services will give you more than a readability score. Usually they provide information about the average length of words and sentences, and what proportion of your verbs are passive. That’s important, because this information will help you bring down your score. Bring down the grade level by shortening sentences and replacing longer words with shorter words. For even more readability, replace passive verbs with active verbs.
Which one you choose doesn’t really matter that much. If nothing else, take the one that’s most convenient and use it regularly.
Your target score will reflect the reading ability of your audience. For example, if you’re writing for university grads, you can go higher than you would with children. If you’re writing for a general audience, aim for Grade 12 or lower. A few grades lower would be even better, of course.
Try several programs or services, settle on one of them, and then use it each time you write, to increase your consistency. Shorten your average sentence and word length to get the grade level you want. The more you do it, the better you’ll be at hitting it on your first draft. You’ll also increase your communication skills and help your readers.
