Just Starting To Sink In

Aren't you enjoying these daily posts? Even if they are all about writing?

So the other day I found a link on the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) website calculating a novel's readability.

Let's take a look at my results.

Number of characters (without spaces) :	39,353.00
Number of words :	8,759.00
Number of sentences :	821.00
Average number of characters per word :	4.49
Average number of syllables per word :	1.48
Average number of words per sentence:	10.67

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index :	8.04

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index :	7.85

So call up every Grade 7 you know and tell them that they will soon have a new novel to read. I always wondered how pretentious my writing was, and well, now I know.

I took at look at what other writers' readability was calculated at, and most had between 4 and 6.

The website also had a list of the readability of other documents. (Just glad to be in the 'most popular novel' category!)

6 -- TV Guide, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 -- Reader's Digest
8 - 10 -- Most popular novels
10 -- Time, Newsweek
11 -- Wall Street Journal
14 -- The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20 -- Academic papers
Over 20 -- Government Sites

Sticking with my daily mantra--"Just keep doing what your doing."

As Always,