Readability Grades

[sooty]

When writing short stories or novels how valuable is readability
grades when assessing the quality of your writing? Without going into
grammar correction programs. Plus when judging assessment levels
concerning Average grade levels, what is considerer an expectable
Average grade level? I have read volumes, regarding Average grade
levels, without finding a committed a number. What number could be
consider as a bench mark for Average grade levels. Is a lower number
the better??? Say 7 or below.

Needing help.

[merald ACE]

Good day , as far as the readability formulas are concern, they are just tools to measure or predict how comprehensible a "technical text" might be.
With regards to literary pieces such as prose or poems, applying readability formulas could be such a waste why?


Youre the apple of my eye , and you are beautiful to me may mean the same thing, when using the readability formulas, word, sentence and paragraph length are considered therefore making prose and poem somehow an exception due to the meaning they have regardless of how long or short it could be.

Well on your question regarding what standard should be followed, In our case , it depends on who or what sector of society you will apply the formula.


in our system we apply it on college students so grades that are recommended for college students became the standard passing grade.


hope it helps.


regards
ace devera , Philippines
readability advocate

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[Joel Nation]

It depends. It depends on the reading grade score you use. If we take
the Flesch-Kincaid reading grade level then this gives us the level of
schooling that a reader would require if they were to read your text.
Ie: if you get a reading grade level of 7 then this means that the
reader would need to have an education level equivalent to year 7
(based on the US schooling system). A score of 13 or more would
require a university education level etc (it get's a little inaccurate
at high numbers). Again this is all just averages and theory,
obviously one year 7 student will be different to another.

As for the best number, again that depends. For a government website
you would want to write content that can be read by the majority of
the population. In America the average reading grade level is about
year 9. This means that the average person on the street can read at a
9th grade level. So you should be aiming for your content to be within
the 7-9 reading grade on the flesch - kincaid score (below 7, and the
text can become too simplistic and it will be hard to get your meaning
out).

You should take all of this with a grain of salt, as the score can be
easily manipulated. The Flesh-Kincaid score really only cares about
sentence length. The shorter the sentences the lower the grade. But
you could imagine a situation where you have very complicated words in
short sentences. It's still probably going to be difficult to read!

-Joel