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.
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.