The smartest way to test your writing skills

How do you test if your web writing is readable or not? One way is to ask a youngster to read it. If he understands it, then it is readable. Otherwise, write again.

But what if you are alone and don’t have a helpful youngster around you. You need not worry. The Internet is your best friend.

All that you need to do is to log on to www.readability-score.com. This is one of the friendliest sites that you can imagine. The site asks you to copy and paste your text. You do that, and the site’s algorithm, running in the background, starts calculating how good your writing is.

In seconds, the result is displayed on a scale of 100. The higher your score, the more readable is your article.

The site uses the Flesch Reading Ease formula.

• If your score is between 90 to 100, then an average 11-year-old student will understand what you have written
• If your score is between 60 to 70, then you can be sure that students between the age of 13 to 15 will understand what you have written
• If, however, your score is from 0 to 30, then only University graduates will be able to follow you.

In fact, it is interesting to see how popular or scholarly magazines do on this scale.

• The average readability score of an article published in Readers Digest is 65
• The average readability score of an article published in Time magazine is 52
• The average readability score of an article published in Harvard Business Review is 30

It is for you to decide who all make your audience. If your audience comprises scholars then you can afford a readability score of 30 or less.

But if you are writing for an average web reader, make sure your writing scores over 60 on readability-score.com