Flesch–Kincaid Readability Formulas-Are You Writing For Your Audience?

Flesch–Kincaid readability formulas are designed to measure the reading ease text written in English. You might ask so what? A friend of mine and I were developing a website. He was adamant that any post, page or article I wrote score 70 or above on the Flesch–Kincaid readability test. A score of 70 or above means the text is easily read by 13 to 15 year old students. A score between 90 and 100 means the material is easily read by an 11 year old student. Sadly my writing scored in the low 30s, which was better for university graduates than for the general public. So that excluded a great number of potential readers.

As a general real estate appraiser, I developed mostly technical writing skills. That's good for other experts in the industry but not so great for everyday writing. One of my biggest problems is that I've had to learn to write down a little. That’s not meant to be a slight upon anyone’s reading ability. It just means that I needed to use less industry specific verbiage.

My friend could only tell me to keep changing stuff and use Flesch–Kincaid Readability Formulas to keep testing by writing until I got the score up. It was clear he didn't know what to do to increase the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula score to make my writing easily read by more people so I read up on it.

The formula for the Flesch Reading Ease test is 206.835-1.015(total words divided by total sentences)-84.6(total syllables divided by total words). Everybody got that? I was just kidding.

It took me a bit but I understand the formula. So, I will just tell you what can do to increase your score. Short sentences, short words, and fewer apostrophes, equals a higher readability score.

As an example “It is a controversial point.” has a reading ease score of 49.6 but the sentence “It is a moot point.” has a reading ease score of 78.8. One word can make a difference.

Well you could count all words, syllables and sentences or if you have Microsoft Word 2007 or newer, the grammar check tab under the review tab will calculate the score for what you write. That’s an easy way. Or you can go to readability-score.com. Another thing that may be able to help you is a WP plugin by Yoast. The plugin will calculate the Flesch–Kincaid Readability Formulas score and suggest some types of changes to your post to improve SEO.

So as a suggestion unless you are doing technical writing to and audience of professionals like lawyers, doctors or engineers etc. keep your Flesch–Kincaid Readability Formulas score at 70 or above. I think the plugin I mentioned and the general rule of short sentences and short words will be good guides to developing your own writing skills.

Because this article was meant to be a little technical, the Flesch–Kincaid Readability Formulas score is much lower than I would have liked. The article scored a 59.8. Oh well.