5 minute mission: Test your readability

By Catherine Caine

Is your website easy to read? Go to the Juicy Studio Readability Test and enter your website address. It’ll do some math (the average number of syllables in a word, and words in a sentence) and give you a few measures, including the average level of education required to understand the content.

The lower the number the better. There are lots of experts who think that a rating that says an eight-grader could understand their content is… embarassing. I’m writing big important articles about advanced topics, I don’t want a primary schooler to be able to read it! they say. And they are wrong.

There are three big reasons you want your website to be as easy to read as possible:

1. To be accessible to a wider audience: this includes visitors with a lower reading level or with English as a second language.

2. To avoid the Curse of Knowledge (Learn more in Remember when you used to suck?)

3. To attract the visitors you most want to reach. People don’t read on the internet, they tend to skim; like they’re going through a magazine. If you use language that isn’t strong and simple, you’ll lose your visitors’ attention.

Our website is readable by most 5th graders. I’m damn proud of that number: we write about technology! I am in love with fancy words! I tend to ramble! I don’t allow myself those indulgences when writing here, because we want to make complicated and intimidating subjects simpler. And simple language is a good way to do that.

What’s your website’s score? Tell us in the comments!

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10 Comments - Join the conversation!
  • Ooo, what a great tool! My website's score was 6.8 (Gunning-Fog), reading ease 77, and grade 4.2. I checked out The Readability Test Tool also and averaged 5th grade.

    I, too, tend to be a rambler with a love for fancy words, so it was nice to get outside confirmation that my blog writing is where I want it to be. :)
  • Hi Kerrie! Welcome!

    Anyone who can use this in their About page has nooooo problems about where their blog writing is aimed at: Moonlight Crafter is what happens when a passion for crafting collides with a zeal for web design. Boom! Kind of like chocolate and peanut butter. Only, you can’t eat it.

    Ah ha ha ha ha! Love it.
  • I use JCs image analysis page too.

    I find using Flagrant Disregard's Word Statistics plugin easier though. I can watch my writing evolve as I save drafts. Wrote an article about it at one point, buried in the archives.
  • That's so cool. I'm trying to resist adding yet more plugins, but that's worth it. Thanks!
  • Thomas
    The Readability Test Tool - http://www.read-able.com/ - is easier to understand.
    It does the same job though.
  • Great resource! Thanks, Thomas, that really is easy to understand.
  • Interesting. My website is readable with 9.7 years of schooling (fog index), Reading ease of 71.55, and fleischer-kincaid grade of 6.77.

    The problem that I always have with sites like this is I start to see them as a competition, how high can I score, how low can I score, that sort of thing. I think I may go for 30+ at some point (the government is trying to cover something up)
  • Well, it depends on what kind of visitor you want to attract. If your target audience is college grads, then your scores are fine. But if you want to be accessible to people with less education/time/attention span, then 30+ is the wrong direction to be looking at. :)
  • I'm unlikely to change my writing style for DMR, however, it will be worth considering for future sites, especially if they are going to have any sort of educational slant.

    I still think a competition to get the highest readability score for a single post would be amusing.
  • Dude, I love me some big words! That gauntlet has been thrown down and accepted. :)
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