You may be familiar with recommendations for certain things to be communicated in a manner that is easily understand. For example, it is so important that public health messaging be understood by people of all literacy levels that the CDC has published a guide for creating easy-to-understand materials.
One specific component that determines how easy it is to understand written works is the readability of words and sentences. If you use Microsoft Word, you may have come across a feature where it calculates readability statistics. For any given document, there are two scores that it provides. The Flesch Reading Ease score rates text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document.
If you don’t have Microsoft Word and still want to calculate readability statistics, there are a number of free online tools that you can use. One of them is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level calculator provided by TextCompare.org. Simply input your text to check its readability score. Another resource is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level calculator provided by Good Calculators. I noticed some variability in the scores with the same text sample, so read the details of their methods to learn more.
Another resource is the Readability Test provided by WebFX. In addition to allowing you to enter a text sample, you can also enter a URL to calculate the readability score of an entire website. It presents scores for Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and a variety of other scores. Here are the results for my blog:
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