Archive for November 14th, 2007

That’ll keep the riff-raff out

Of course, the tool this came from gives no indication whatsoever of what method it uses to determine readability, and sneakily inserts a link to an advertiser in the html they give you to copy, so caveat lector.

Update: After Googling around a little, my guess is that the tool uses the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test, both because it delivers the results in categories that roughly correspond to grade level, and because it’s a test that’s simple enough to calculate with a tiny program.  The formula (from the Wikipedia article) is:

0.39 \left ( \frac{\mbox{total words}}{\mbox{total sentences}} \right ) + 11.8 \left ( \frac{\mbox{total syllables}}{\mbox{total words}} \right ) - 15.59
 

It’s my infatuation with sesquipedalian verbiage I tells ya.

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007