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.
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
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).