Optimize your content using the Flesch Reading Ease test When it comes to the Flesch Reading Ease test, it’s a low score that indicates reading difficulty. With the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, the higher the score, the more difficult the text is to read. Since many readability tools test the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level together with the Flesch Reading Ease, their scores can be confusing. While the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level also uses the average word and syllable count, the score it presents is inverse in comparison to the Flesch Reading Ease test. To put it differently, it indicates how many years of education are needed to understand that text. So a text’s score in the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level reflects the grade level it’s appropriate for. He modified Flesch’s original equation to present the score as a U.S. Navy to develop a system for assessing the readability of technical manuals. And what is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level? With its influence in the world of news and copywriting, it has proven to produce reliable insight that scales well across various types of text. Nowadays, the Flesch Reading Ease test is one of the most popular readability measurements. in Library Science at Columbia University.
He developed this idea while pursuing a Ph.D. Best understood by university graduates.įlesch’s working assumption was that the shorter the sentence and the words within, the easier it is to understand. Easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students. Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student.Įasy to read. The balance is your readability score.”įlesch also provided a table used for interpreting the scores. Multiply the average word length by 84.6. “Multiply the average sentence length by 1.015.
FLESCH READABILITY SCALE BOOK HOW TO
He explained his formula in the second chapter of his book, How to Write Plain English : Working as a consultant to The Associated Press, Flesch came up with a system of evaluating readability for journalists and copywriters to use. The equation is based on the average count of words and syllables per word.
The easier the text is to understand, the higher it is graded on a scale of 0 to 100. Used in communications since the 1940s, the equation created by Rudolf Flesch allows writers to optimize any text’s reading difficulty towards the target audience. The Flesch Reading Ease test measures the readability of a passage in English. In this post, I want to explore how the Flesch Reading Ease test can be used to analyze and improve readability, and in what ways it can be useful in terms of SEO. In turn, these metrics are related to rankings, so it’s essential to keep readability in mind when creating content. While not a direct ranking factor, readability is related to many user experience metrics, like bounce rate, time on page, and dwell time. Readability is the measure of how easy a text is to understand.