What’s your score?

Have you heard of the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level? My 13-year-old niece told me about it while I was working on my college papers. In Word, after the spelling and grammar check finishes, you can get your grade level and reading ease score by clicking the preferences under tools. The grade level is supposed to identify the target educational level of your reader based on your writing. Reading ease is presented as a percentage—presumably 100% is optimal. It also tells you the percentage of passive sentences in your piece. I suppose those are bad.

My niece, an eighth grader, says that if you take the grade level and multiply it by 10, that should be the grade you get on your paper. So a level of 8.3, for example, means you should get an 83 on your work. Maybe in eighth grade, but how does it apply to college? Or work? Or life?

I looked up Flesch-Kincaid under Word Help and apparently the scores are determined by the number of syllables in the words and the number of words in the sentences. Their recommendation is to aim for writing at a Grade 8 level with minimum 60% reading ease. Whatever levels you are trying for, there are no suggestions for changing your text to improve your score. You are on your own.

It becomes somewhat addictive. You check your piece and then think about how you might improve it. You change a few words and check again. Might be higher. Might be lower. Then you start checking parts of your paper: sections; paragraphs; sentences. You compare your score with an article you downloaded. You highlight emails from friends and check them. If you are prone to procrastination, Flesch-Kincaid is for you!

Another great interlude is freerice.com where you identify the meaning of random words. If you choose the correct answer, the website donates grains of rice to poor countries through the United Nations. And your vocabulary is scored as you go along with 50 the highest score.

If you’re interested, this blog scored a 5.6 grade level and 75% reading ease. Not too many big words or long sentences! I’d like to say I kept it simple on purpose, but that’s just the way it came out. I’m waiting for grades to be posted for my paper, which scored a 12.7 grade level and 53% reading ease. I hope there weren’t too many passive sentences. Not that I would know.