Text readability test

Text readability test

When people are writing something - unless it’s a private and confidential thing like a diary - they do so with the intention that someone reads it. It's especially true when it comes to websites. You create some nice and informative piece of writing for your website (or have it done by a professional) so that your potential clients read it and act upon it. Undoubtedly, the targeted audience is more likely to read your text when it's easy to do so. It seems simple, doesn’t it? But how can you test whether your content is easy to read or not?

What makes an 'easy-to-read' text?

There are several elements, such as content, number of sentences, words, syllables - and how we 'present' them, of course. Presentation is about font size, line height, line length, and how we format the content. Formatting and visuality lead us to web design, but this time we are writing about the 'formula' itself.

Our text readability checker is based on the original formula invented by J. Peter Kincaid in 1975.

Let's see the formula:

(source: Wikipedia)

The 'Flesch–Kincaid' or 'text readability' test is designed to show how difficult it is to read - and therefore to understand - the content. It was developed for the U.S. Navy, as such, the original formula works primarily for English.

Just type in (or paste) your text into this field, and you'll get the result right below the box.

Explanation of the result:

You need to try to achieve a Flesch Reading Ease Score between 50-100.

• 0-30: Very difficult to read. It's not for an average business website.
• 30-50: Difficult to read. When it comes to technical stuff or a complex topic, you might need it, but it's not recommended, in general.
• 50-60: It's much better; however, it's still a bit difficult to read.
• 60-70: That's OK. Plain English, which is easy to understand.
• 70-80: Well done. Quite easy to read.
• 80-90: Easy, conversational text. It's excellent for customer communication.
• 90-100: Very easy to read, even for children.