I used this online test to see how I could make my prose sound more educated. Here is a record of my progress:
5th grade: "Readability tests? Use big words to get high scores."
7th grade: "If you want to get a high readability test score, you should use big words."
14th grade: "If your purpose is the attainment of a high readability score, a strategy of using big words is highly recommended."
Post-doctoral: "To facilitate the appearance of impenetrable readability, utilization of polysyllabic utterance is a manifestly successful strategy."
For reading scores with strength,
And to lose the common herd,
Always go for length -
Long sentences, long words!
Only those with college -
In the humanities -
Will have sufficient knowledge
To detect your inanities.
Wait. I thought the higher the readability scores, the easier it is to read the text. Is that not the case? Because, as an editor, when I make a comment about readability, I usually say, rephrase the sentence to *improve* readability. As in, I intend it to be easier to read.
ReplyDeleteSo, how would using big, impenetrable words help in raising readability scores?
There are 2 opposite measures.
ReplyDeleteOne is "grade level", where "1st grade" means a 6-year old in the American school system. In this system as the numbers get higher, the required education level increases. So on this scale, a high score means low readability.
But the other scale - the one I didn't quote - proceeds the other way around. In that scale, a high score means high readability.
Sorry for the confusion!