Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Scroll down at this site to measure the reading level of your articles through  the Gunning Fog Index scale.

Or you can gauge the readability of  publication you tend to read, to check the prose’s grade level.  Why does reading level matter anyway? 

Blogs, memos or directions -  with too low a reading level,  may be talking down to readers. Too high a score ... on the other hand ... likely means you are writing over your readers’ heads so you might as well tell the dog. Check any blog and watch the ones that bring you most reader response.

It’s quite simply to calculate, as it was for the Flesch Index, and it’s remarkably accurate.

Now test your results.  For instance, compare reading levels of two blogs you read to see how they differ in scores – using the Gunning Index to show fog or fog-free prose.

Here’s how it works.

1. Count any 100 sequential words, ending with the end of a sentence even if it lands you a few words past 100.  _____.
2. Calculate an average sentence length – divide the number of sentences into 100 _____.
3. Count words with 3 or more syllables as these are “hard” words in your piece_____.
Note - Don’t count proper nouns or combinations of easy words like “articles”  or “directions.” 
4. Add average sentence length in step 2 to number of hard words in step 3. _____.
5. Multiply the total in step 4 by 0.4 to get the reading level for your passage  _____.

You’ll find the easy reading level is 6 – 10. The average person reads at level 9. Anything above 17 is difficult even for university graduates.

Try gauging the readability of the first 100 words in this post to see how it works. I did it below.

1). 100
2). 17
3). 2
4). 19
5). 8 is the reading level score for the article on Gunning Fog Index use.

The score on the first 100 words of this blog is 8 which means this blog’s reading level is geared to most readers. Where does your writing fall in the Gunning Fog Index?