Writing Good

I stumbled across this neat little app yesterday that measures how well you write by using the Flesch-Kincaid system. All you need do is provide a writing sample and it will tell you what grade level is needed to comprehend your writing and how easy it is to read the stuff you write.

I was curious to see how some of our HoCo loco writers fare with this test. According to this chart from Readability Formulas, the lower the score the more difficult the read. This article by Sara Toth in Explore Howard earned a score of 33 (“Difficult’) at a 14th grade level while a blog post by 53 Beers on Tap on the same subject rated a 55 (“Fairly Difficult”). Both Marshmallow Man and I are writing blog posts at a 9^th and 10^th grade level respectively. My sample post also rated Fairly Difficult at 52. Tom Coale and Sara Toths writing is more college level stuff. This post by Tom was rated at a 13^th grade level with a readability score of 39 (Difficult).