After doing a substantial number of grammar checks on my writing, I’ve started to become really curious about the reading ease scores that Word keeps throwing in my face afterwards. Useful, but curious. After looking up what they mean I decided to test the limits of the scores and found that, well, they don’t mean squat. Observe:

• The cat jumped over the dog.

• The feline succeeded in a spectacularly executed vertical displacement beyond the canine guard.

The first gave a score of 100 and a grade level of 0.5. This means, and I agree, that everyone in the world who knows English can read and understand that. The second sentence was graded with 0 and a grade level of 12. This means that only collegiate readers would have an ice cube’s chance in hell of understanding it. That’s a sentence I could understand in middle school and this formula thinks it takes a grad to read?

Syllables do not make a work difficult, and longer sentences simply require a larger attention span. This is silly. Frankly, I won’t think that I’ve done my job as a writer until I can drill the score down to at least 40 for the whole work, at which point I’ll be satisfied enough at my work to release it. =)

Until then, off I go adding large words to large sentences!