I’m making this thread mostly because I need to procrastinate. My paper is going horribly and I need a break.
So find something you’ve written and figure out the score and let me know.
The score I got for the paper I’m writing is a 9.0. No big words for me I guess…
It’s always a twelve, but I’m prone to long words in complicated sentences.
I once had an assignment where we had to ‘translate’ an EPA document on a proposed program for marijuana abatement into something that would be readable to someone with an eighth-grade education. Our teacher recommended checking the Fleisch-Kincaid scores to see if we were anywhere near that, and we just couldn’t get it to go below ten, although we were using the simplest words and most basic sentence structures. Then we realized the problem was… ‘marijuana.’
hrmmm… 13.
I guess I do tend to be a pompous blowhard, and too highly influenced by Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Lord Dunsany in my unmarketable fiction attempts.
My one and only A+ college English paper rated a 17. I guess my prof liked a challenge.
Why use paragraphs, when a sentence can do the job? 
Mine are always 12 unless I’m making a conscious effort to streamline the language and sentence structure.
BTW, the above sentence is rated at 9.7. Sometimes I just don’t understand the system. What is it about the sentence makes it above middle school readability?
When I was working, were were told that all correspondence should be written so that any 8th grader could read it.
Always scared me that the business world, who are supposed to be college educated, could only read and comprehend at an 8th grade level.
Then I started getting emails and correspondence from them with misspellings and sentence structure that backed it up. I was constantly amazed that some people graduated from grade school (let alone college) with the crap that passed by my desk.
I can only imagine it’s worse now with most kids nowadays that are used to internet slang and text speak that leaves much to be desired when reading.
The online classes I took this last year are proof of this as well. The kind of shit people were writing in the “discussion board” section of the class wouldn’t have been accepted in middle school. MS Word checks for grammar and spelling, how can you average multiple errors per sentence? Oh, and they all get passing grades. Spelling and grammar just aren’t important apparently.