It is official - the reading level of the Conchango blog is Junior
High School. There may be sniggers from the
academics among us but this readability rating should be applauded.
For a fun tool with an important message head over to the Blog Readability Test
to find out “what level of education is required to
read your blog?”
Readability is defined as ‘reading ease’ - a measure of how easy
it is to read and comprehend a passage of text. Readability tests are mathematical formulas,
most commonly based on word length, number of syllables in a word, and the
number of words in a sentence.
The
more readable a blog is, the easier it is for people to comprehend, remember
and be engaged.
Readability tests have been around for nearly 90 years. There are dozens of them. The more commonly used ones include Flesch Reading
Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, FOG, and the wonderfully titled SMOG (Simple
Measure of Gobbledygook).
Most folk are not aware that Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level are included with Microsoft Word.
To enable them in MS Word select Spelling
and Grammar, click ‘options’, and select the checkbox ‘show usability statistics’.
The different tests do give varying results and the
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels can give flattering levels by showing a grade 2 to
3 levels below that of other readability formulas. I am not sure what algorithm
the Blog Readability
Test uses.
These readability formulas act as a predictor of difficulty and supporters of such algorithms say they give a reasonable indication of how readable your post is. These are not precise diagnostic tools and a
nonsensical paragraph of gobbledygook could achieve a misleading score. The results from these algorithms make interesting reading but
understandably they do have their critics (me included).
“Nearly all of today's blockbuster writers write at the
7th-grade level, including John Grisham, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, and Dan
Brown”. Authors of children’s books take readability very seriously and
they repeatedly run their scripts through readability programs to check
suitability for their audience.
As bloggers we should all be taking readability seriously. In my opinion these readability algorithms should be taken with a pinch of salt as they do not take format, punctuation, spelling or content in to account, but if this tool simply makes us bloggers think about the readability of our posts then this can only be a good thing.
This fun tool serves as a reminder that typical readers might
find your writings hard to comprehend. An
important rule of thumb is to write your post at a readability level pitched below
that of your target audience. This tool is light-hearted and not to be taken too seriously but
it does raise some very important considerations about how you write your posts
to make them more readable and accessible.
A co-worker recently fired this readability test at our Conchango blog and it returned the grade Genius. After my flurry of recent posts the reading level for the Conchango blog is Junior High School. Should I be concerned? :)
P.S.
Conchango are recruiting! If any of my ramblings interest you and you
are passionate about User Experience the we'd like to hear from you.
Why not contact me and let's have a chat?
Listening to: Untrue by Burial