What’s the reading level of your blog or website?

I read an interesting post this morning about checking your reading level, to see if you are reaching your target audience.   Newspapers, for example, shoot for a 6th to 8th grade reading level. This, of course, is calculated by one of several simple formulas using sentence length, word length, and so on; it says nothing about whether or not any of the sentences make sense.  A local paper will often have a lower reading level than USA Today or the NY Times.  You get the idea.

Tammy Lenski (author of the above-mentioned post) pointed to a cool site, Juicy Studio, that will calculate the reading level of your site: http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php.   It’s pretty cool, using three different formulas, and explaining how each works.   My blog is pretty consistent 8th-grade level.  The business blog I am setting up rates at an 11th or 12th-grade level, however.  This is probably a bit high for marketing purposes.

However, these tests only measure the structure of your writing, not the content.  For example, a post dealing with more complex philosophical and theological concepts rated lower than a post dealing with current events.  This is probably good, as it would make the concepts more accessible across the board. Either that, or I should start using more complex sentence structures to make myself sound more intelligent.

Try out the Juicy Studio site and let me know what you think.

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2 Responses to What’s the reading level of your blog or website?

  1. Bill Bartmann says:

    Great site…keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,

    A definite great read…:)

    -Bill-Bartmann

  2. Steve Martin says:

    I’m not exactly sure of the reading level of my blog (some pretty sharp cookies stop by there), but the writing level is about 4th grade (when I have something to do with it).

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