RSS Feed
Blog Readability Test
Have you finished high school? If not, chances are you won’t be able to read this blog.
Yes, it’s yet another ridiculous online test. I’m a sucker for these, and I can’t help myself whenever there’s a nice button saying “test yourself;” this time I didn’t have to fill in anything other than my blog’s URL, though. Here you can see a speculation that the algorithm is a variant of the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formula, and given the little I know of Flesch-Kincaid (NOTHING!) I’m inclined to agree. It’s your usual run-of-the-mill combination of sentence length and syllables and whatnot to generate an estimated lowest necessary level of education to understand the text; apparently I’m lucid enough for all post high school people.
“High school? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I thought this was a blog about technical issues for nerds and geeks and weirdos, but even wee high schoolers can read it!”
Well… I was a bit miffed at first until I tested a number of other sites:
- www.penny-arcade.com – Elementary School
- www.abc.com – Elementary School
- www.crankygeeks.com – Junior High
- www.tomshardware.com – Junior High
- www.gamespot.com – Junior High
- www.imdb.com – Junior High
- www.xkcd.com – Junior High
- www.gameproducer.net – Junior High
- anders-ivarsson.blogspot.com – Junior High
(Did you know that my Indian name is Can’t be Arsed to Make Proper Links?)
Of course, I also found a bunch of sites that also got the High School grade. I can honestly say that some of these surprised me. Quite a bit.
- www.gamefaqs.com
- www.gamasutra.com
- www.gamedev.net
- www.tigsource.com
- www.slashdot.org
- www.engadget.com
GameFAQs? What the hell? Anyway, in my search I did find a couple of sites that received a rating above High School. They’re hard to find, but here are two:
- www.microsoft.com
- www.gamepolitics.com
Can you find any others?
December 6th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa….Penny Arcade is elementary school level? There are sentences which require that I use a dictionary and parse some sentences multiple times before I understand it sometimes. B-)
December 11th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Note of defense: when I tested some of my English-only blog posts I got the same level as your blog did. But then again – that probably means they don’t have a higher level, since your English is way more advanced/correct that mine.