Thursday, March 23, 2006

"Do you read me?"

Ever wonder why some blogs are easier to read than others? Ever wonder whether you're getting your message across effectively? Ever wonder whether your blog requires a post-graduate education in order to understand it? Or if a first-grade reading level will suffice?

Well, I discovered this Readability Test, and it is pretty interesting. You plug in a URL and it spits out the "readability" of the writing using several different "algorhythms". It even tells you the average number of syllables in the words you use and your average "words per sentence" (mine is a mere 7! I thought I used much longer sentences...).

In case you're interested, my blog requires somewhere between a fourth-grade and a seventh-grade reading level for an understanding of the content, depending on which index you're judging it on. And in terms of "ease of readability", on a scale of 1 to 100, where the higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document, and "authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70," I scored over 76. So, based on these indices, my blog is easy to read, but requires at least a pre-teen's level of maturity. Ha.

Have fun!

YC

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tip, Lauren. That was fun.

It's nice to know that someone (me!)is writing for the middle-school Ashtangis.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I can't help it..."algorithms".

PS tried finding my ayurvedic massage course notes but I've lost them, sorry about that :-(

Yoga Chickie said...

AlgorIthms...ah. That will probably cut against my readability score, even if I spelled it correctly....

Lauren

Anonymous said...

Fun! Thanks for the link, Lauren.

I've discovered that:
1) I write long sentences (an average of 9.4 words long)$.
2) I use too many monosyllables; that makes reading easier but makes me think I'm a nerd when it comes to writing in English.
3) I scored 78.56 in the Flesch Reading Ease (I scored 78.56). Strange.

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About Me

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Northern Westchester, New York, United States
I live by a duck pond. I used to live by the East River. I don't work. I used to work a lot. Now, not so much. I used to teach a lot of yoga. Now not so much. I still practice a lot of yoga though. A LOT. I love my kids, being outdoors, taking photos, reading magazines, writing and stirring the pot. Enjoy responsibly.

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