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Readability

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
So, I've been going over and over my manuscripts lately, getting them prepped for publication.

As part of this, I use MS Words editor to catch the trivial grammar and punctuation mistakes that can sneak by all but the most careful.

Lately, though, I've been going a bit deeper with the Editor, checking out the 'statistics' part, something I don't normally bother with, but, well, any help is better than no help.

According to the stats:

My 'Flech Reading Ease' scores tend towards the upper 70's. 'Plain English' is 60-70. The higher the score, the easier the read.

My Flech-Kincaid Grade Level scores are in the 4-5 range, usually about 4.5. That corresponds to years of education in the US K-12 school system. Hence my work is supposedly understandable by 4th-5th graders. The claim is most present-day fiction is written for a few grade levels above that.

The other thing brought up is Passive Voice, a topic about which there were multiple debates on this site in days long past. I check in at 1.5-2.5% on this. The recommendation is to keep Passive Voice between 5-10%, the lower the better.

So, if these stats are to be given any credence, my work is extremely readable. And while not intended for such, quite understandable by the typical 5th grader.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
6662ba1e3319a1b7ab7ad64a9a50ea15.jpg
We are communicators. We are also gymnasts. It's a fine line to walk, but one we must all measure for ourselves. For example, there are certain writers I can't stand. Why? Because they are pretentious. They write not to entertain or provoke thought or emotion, but to show off their "superior" intellect. I can be sesquipedalian. I can be obstruse. But I don't because why? The reader is just as intelligent as I am. My job is as an entertainer, not a pedantic twit.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
I wasn't aware microsoft even had these statistics to finick with. I'm glad to see that my readability scores hover around the 70% range, from what I can find that's a decent readability score. The grade level in my cyberpunk world seems to level out at a consistent 8. I reckon this matches my intended audience. Accessible enough for everyone to enjoy.

Fun stuff, thank you for sharing Thinker.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
On a whim, I went and ran the Readability statistics on some of my old, old tales from two dozen plus years ago. The lowest Flech Reading score was 69, the highest grade level was 6.5, and the largest passive voice score was 4.4%; Those old stories do require a lot of editing, though - most were at 80-85%, with piles of spelling and grammar issues.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I came in at 5th grade level. I was pleased to the degree that i think it matters (which is little). I would have guessed it was a more difficult read. I tend to write twisty, hard to punctuate sentences.

i secretly fear the amount of work a real editor may make me do.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I did not know Word would do passives, although I tend to not use Word, so it isn't that shocking. Krikee! I don't even have Word on my newish MacBook! I figured it was at least there.

The grade level thing is so simplistic I find it weird, though not as weird as people tossing in meaningless ten-penny words to increase the grade level of "intellectual" works, heh heh.

Tangent alert!

The trouble with most statistical analysis, IMO, is the lack of distinguishing dialogue from nondialogue. My passives tend to run about 1% when I pay attention, but half or more are in dialogue. PWA does attempt to break this up some, at least with adverbs, but at the same time, some of their stat toys are broken, heh heh. Their dialogue tag stats are just whacked. It seems to count anything in the same paragraph as dialogue, so if someone smiles at someone in the same paragraph, it's like it wants to call that smile a dialogue tag.

So, this has no "unusual dialogue tags"

Bob smiled at Jim.
"How are you today?"

Neither does:

Bob smiled. "How are you today?"

But this does have an "unusual dialogue tag"

Bob smiled at Jim. "How are you today?"

This is, IMO an action tag, not a dialogue tag, because you can't smile anything... without a talent I am unaware of.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I find those tools dont really apply to fiction writing and are more geared towards business or academic writing.

I also agree that anything between quotes does not have to follow any actual rules of grammar or spelling.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
I did not know Word would do passives, although I tend to not use Word, so it isn't that shocking. Krikee! I don't even have Word on my newish MacBook! I figured it was at least there.

The grade level thing is so simplistic I find it weird, though not as weird as people tossing in meaningless ten-penny words to increase the grade level of "intellectual" works, heh heh.

Tangent alert!

The trouble with most statistical analysis, IMO, is the lack of distinguishing dialogue from nondialogue. My passives tend to run about 1% when I pay attention, but half or more are in dialogue. PWA does attempt to break this up some, at least with adverbs, but at the same time, some of their stat toys are broken, heh heh. Their dialogue tag stats are just whacked. It seems to count anything in the same paragraph as dialogue, so if someone smiles at someone in the same paragraph, it's like it wants to call that smile a dialogue tag.

So, this has no "unusual dialogue tags"

Bob smiled at Jim.
"How are you today?"

Neither does:

Bob smiled. "How are you today?"

But this does have an "unusual dialogue tag"

Bob smiled at Jim. "How are you today?"

This is, IMO an action tag, not a dialogue tag, because you can't smile anything... without a talent I am unaware of.

Click the toggles in the settings for MS Word and it pretty much does everything that ProWritingAid or Grammarly does. Leave unclicked the boxes that bring up the things that makes ProWritingAid and Grammarly flip out.

People being sloppy speakers, I tend to ignore Words comments about dialogue.
 
Personally I have zero interest in such programs - can't help but feel that taking too much notice might influence the originality of your style, but I am certainly a dinosaur, so don't listen to me.

My readability trick is always to read aloud during editing sweeps. Works wonders for getting the rhythm of sentences exactly right.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
Just one thing. That MS-Word tool is only available if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription. If, like me, you don't like that sort of software sales model then you can't use the tool.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
Not true. They’ve had that feature since at least office 2007.
See the information on the following link:

Get your document's readability and level statistics

The feature may have been available in Office 2007, but it isn't available in Office 2019 and I'm fairly sure it wasn't available in the standalone versions after Office 2013. It was after Office 2013 was released that Microsoft started pushing what is now Microsoft 365, and one of the ways they did that was to take certain tools and features out of the standalone versions and make them available only in the subscription (365) version.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Narrating an audiobook along with replays etc etc is my ultimate pass on future books. Ignoring advice, whether digital or human, is a key skill. Might as well practice on an unoffendable machine, heh heh. I find the stats fun, I just don't give a rats patootie about them outside of actual errors. For writers starting out, things that identify passives and repeated words and overused words can be handy. If I'm reading someone's writing and find myself falling asleep, and I run their work through PWA for Pacing, the odds are strong that PWA will point out slow pacing. But of course, slow pacing isn't bad in and of itself. Another time I used it to point to an author just how many "filler" words they used. They were shocked. For another writer, the "emotional tells" identifier was useful to save me time in pointing out how often they did it.

They're tools, like a hammer, able to drive a nail or crush your thumb.


Personally I have zero interest in such programs - can't help but feel that taking too much notice might influence the originality of your style, but I am certainly a dinosaur, so don't listen to me.

My readability trick is always to read aloud during editing sweeps. Works wonders for getting the rhythm of sentences exactly right.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
I don't have MS Word so I used an online checker for one of my short stories. I scored a 64 Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Plain English. It's probably about right. I don't care too much about these things, though. I just write what I want to write.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
IMHO, things like this have limited application when it comes to fiction. It doesn't take into account there are specific reasons for expressing things one way vs another. Efficiency isn't always the way you want to go. I could simply write, "He ran." or I can spend a paragraph or two meandering and describing how he ran. Which one is right for the moment?

An interesting thing to try is don't run your text through the algorithm. Try running some pro level prose through it, like say your favorite book or some award winning books, and see what it says. When I did this, some prose comes out very clean. Other times, there's complaints all over the place.

I don't think it's a good idea to let an algorithm dictate what's working and what's not. To me it's just another way of following a set of rules, a la never use adverbs, blindly.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
IMHO, things like this have limited application when it comes to fiction. It doesn't take into account there are specific reasons for expressing things one way vs another. Efficiency isn't always the way you want to go. I could simply write, "He ran." or I can spend a paragraph or two meandering and describing how he ran. Which one is right for the moment?

An interesting thing to try is don't run your text through the algorithm. Try running some pro level prose through it, like say your favorite book or some award winning books, and see what it says. When I did this, some prose comes out very clean. Other times, there's complaints all over the place.

I don't think it's a good idea to let an algorithm dictate what's working and what's not. To me it's just another way of following a set of rules, a la never use adverbs, blindly.
Mostly, I use the MS Word Editor to spot grammar bugs - misspelled words, vague words, punctuation issues, that sort of thing, It catches issues of this sort I miss. 'Readability' is something I applied on a whim a few days ago.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone advocating for letting a program dictate your choices. What they can be good for is identifying brain/finger hiccups (aka typos and weird phrases that are the result of demonic possession or the cat/dog/child deciding to be a novelist) and things to ask yourself about. Best case, you find some habit you have that you don't like. Pretty much the same as with editors, except I give the latter more respect.

I'd still advocate for paying a good editor once (if able) to help find things that have become blindspots to the writer.
 
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