I remember learning about algorithms in maths and thinking how they would never have any interesting use for me. And now I’ve been proved wrong. I found this website which has a Readability Test. It uses algorithms to calculate how easy it is to read a webpage. So here are the results for the very page your eyes are reading now..
Total sentences 387
Total words 5074
Average words per Sentence 13.11
Words with 1 Syllable 3518
Words with 2 Syllables 1008
Words with 3 Syllables 407
Words with 4 or more Syllables 141
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 10.80%
Average Syllables per Word 1.44
Gunning Fog Index 9.56
Flesch Reading Ease 71.50
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.54
And here’s the maths behind it:
1) Algorithm: (average_words_sentence + number_words_three_syllables_plus) * 0.4
The Gunning-Fog index is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.
2) Algorithm: 206.835 – (1.015 * average_words_sentence) – (84.6 * average_syllables_word) The Flesch index number rates the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.
3) Algorithm: (0.39 * average_words_sentence) + (11.8 * average_syllables_word) – 15.9
The Flesch-Kincaid grade level, like the Gunning-Fog index, it is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. Negative results are reported as zero, and numbers over twelve are reported as twelve.
So there you go! Even with my 10.80% of 3+syllable words, I’m still easily readable.
