Find Out What Grade Level You Write At

This came up in one of my technical writing classes: Evaluating the grade level and readability of a text. In a creative writing perspective, you want to write at the level your audience is familiar with. This rule is changed up a bit if you want to be writing for advanced readers, where you would want to target the interests of say, 8th graders but have them read at a 10th grade level.

To do this test, take a sample of your writing and copy-paste it into the text box. This site is the one I like best from my fifteen minutes of browsing around.

http://standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/index.php

How this essentially works is it evaluates how many words you have that are 3+ syllables long, and calculates the frequency of them. It also looks at the average sentence length. There's an actual formula (go search wikipedia for Flesch-Kincaid and it should show up) but I don't feel like repeating it. So, go muse and have fun.

FYI, mine was grade 8 with a readability of 64.

...

I write at grade 15. T.T

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 10.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 56
Good to know

That's cool!
Though the results for my latest poem was kind of disappointing...
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 9.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 59

Well, I'll get better with time...

Thanks for sharing that with us!
Cheers,
Alpha

I failed. Badly.

Well, the piece I submitted that involved cursing, violence, alcohol e.t.c. (This) got a Flesch-Kincaid Grade level of 5... It got a Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score of 73.

I need to start using words with more syllables in them, for the sake of fifth graders who don't want to read about drunken violence.

Gah! I submitted this:

Spoiler

The Silver Blade Inn stood by Third Avenue, down the main road where although one of the major roads, it was less frequented by the common folk. Many disliked the inconvenience of using the road down Third Avenue for at the opposite end of the road, one would be met by a right turn, leading to Fifth Avenue instead of the town square, unlike the other roads, which spread and fanned out from the centre of the town. Despite the fact that is was more inconvenient in having to travel by Third Avenue, it didn't stop the more enthusiastic folk from situating their businesses down Third Avenue. There were almost no dwellings there, for most dwellings were even further from the town square, but a single straight road, namely The Express led straight to the many dwellings.

And got this:

Spoiler

Result
Method used: Flesch-Kincaid (English).

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 16.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 41.

Yet when I actually submitted another part of my story I got another result far from that =/

Anyway, this is an interesting site =o I actually spent quite a bit of time there =P

I got this:

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 10.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 57.

which is funny since I thought my grade would've been something like 3.

Ooh, interesting!

My new novel:
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 8.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 65.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 9.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 66

Is this a good thing?

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 6.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 75.

I kinda feel dumb because mine is the lowest on here but...


~peanut~

I got...

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 12
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 37

But what exactly do these 'levels' and 'scores' mean???

I write a bunch of stuff, and it's all different, but my average is grade 8 with a reading ease of 62.5. Yay! (?)



~Blue

I got a grade level of 10
And Readability of 58.

I'm happy with that. I also found this pretty funny:

legalese can get a score below 10

I've read 'legalese' and that is true. It's almost like they do it on purpose...

Essays were what I expected, however the poems I placed into it got quite hilarious.

One garnered a grade level of 535 with reading ease of...-5735. So we can see how this system works. Another poem got a grade level of 29, with reading ease of 1. I then found another poem, written at 11 grade level with reading ease of 41...and it is published at that. And then a very, very famous poem got 17 grade level with reading ease of 39. Finally, Howl by Ginsberg gets 142 grade level and -297 reading ease.

Amusing I think. Even more interesting is that the score actually predicts certain writers grade level well who I put in.