Flesch-Kincaid Levels for Writers

A while ago, I found a nifty website that uses an excerpt to determine reading level on a range called Flesch-Kincaid. This scale/formula uses syllable count and word length to give you a number that’s supposed to correspond to grade level.

After doing some copy-and-paste, I discovered that my last fantasy book came up with a level of 7, just about right for the target audience. This blog’s posts clock in around 10-12 (so if you're under age sixteen, this is too advanced for you--go away). My final Eastern World Religions paper on bacon in world religions was a 15, which probably makes it the most complex block of text written about bacon in the history of the world.

Except then I used Word’s Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics on the same documents. The book was a 4,  the blog averaged 6.5, and my paper was barely past high school standards, at 12.1. Another online Flesch-Kincaid calculator put those same excerpts out as 3.7, 9.1, and 13.6.

What is going on here?

Basically, I have no idea. There’s a set formula for the Flesch-Kincaid method. This one.

Probably the only time you will see a formula on this blog.

That means that both the website and Word should be putting out the same number. I can think of a few possibilities for the differences (treatment of proper nouns, difference in how they deal with syllable counts in unrecognized words. etc), but it still doesn't explain everything.

I realized after an Internet search that I had accidentally stumbled on a point of great contention. On official Flesch-Kincaid-using sites, some books line up very nicely. Black Beauty, for example, is a 4, and level 2 contained mostly short fables and fairy tales.

For others, usefulness is questionable. Sure, maybe a 6^th grader could read The Illiad according to sentence structure…but what twelve-year-old wants to? And would anyone want to explain to me how The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ended up with a level of 4 while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn jumped up to a 10? Either Twain dumped the entire contents of an SAT prep vocab list into Huck, or subject matter somehow comes into consideration. (The site never mentions this in their methodology explanation, so maybe I’m just crazy.)

Fairy Tale Jesus, Part One

"Am I teaching kids to behave Christian-ly without teaching them Christianity?"

So wonders Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, a delightful series of Bible stories that he now says falls short of what it means to teach children about God. (Watch the interview. DO IT. This guy is seriously my hero.)

He points out that a lot of times, when it comes to writing for children, we hand them a moral instead of a story.

There’s a place for that. Sermon illustrations, Aesop’s fables, and coloring book captions are too short to get much into character development and plot. If the purpose is to drive home a point, illustrate a concept, or briefly refer to something else, it’s okay to have less than a story.

It’s also okay for stories to contain a moral of sorts. Think about your favorite stories as a child, from your fairy tale and very hungry caterpillar days to the chapter book series you read in later years. Most of them probably taught you things about the way people should act, the dangers of being greedy, or the importance of teamwork. Those are all good things.

But a moral by itself is not a story. It’s a fragment of one. Put into proper context, morals are the powerful underlying messages that can change our lives. By themselves, they’re pretty weak and unconvincing, left looking nervously around for narrative, foreshadowing, characters, and conflict to back them up and make them worthwhile.