Google added a few figures to their “Word Count” feature [1] that are supposed to measure how easy to read a document is. I tried to find out more about these figures, because the “Fleisch-Kincaid Grade Level” didn’t really tell me all that much. While searching, I found the Juicy Studio: Readability [2] website that gave me even more numbers. Even after reading what the numbers mean, still find them pretty meaningless, but they are interesting enough to share.
Currently, my thesis generates the following results:
Total sentences: 1534 Total words: 18006 Average words per Sentence: 11.74 Words with 1 Syllable: 11817 Words with 2 Syllables: 3377 Words with 3 Syllables: 1697 Words with 4 or more Syllables: 1115 Percentage of word with three or more syllables: 15.62% Average Syllables per Word: 1.56 Gunning Fog Index: 10.94 Flesch Reading Ease: 62.79 Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 7.42
Both the Gunning Fog Index and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade are supposed to represent the years of schooling the reader will have to have received to understand the text. My thesis apparently is accessible to high school juniors or even freshmen, depending on what figure you use. Typical Gunning Fog Index values for academic papers are 15 to 20.
