Measuring Readability of Online Texts

Did you know??? 

There is an amazing tool available to you when trying to determine the readability of digital text. Read-able.com (http://www.read-able.com/) is a website where you can input the url for the text you would like to use with your students. Click "Calculate Readability" and a grade level readability score and suggested ages will appear for the text. If you scroll down a bit further, you can see the scores on various indices such as Flesch Kincaid, Gunning Fog, etc. You will also get statistics such as sentence count, number of words, number of complex words, etc. Finally, you get an explanation of the various indices used to score the text.

For example, I put in a Scholastic News article I found online. I entered http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758216.  Following are my results:

Readability Test Results
Web Address: scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758216
This page has an average grade level of about 7.
It should be easily understood by 12 to 13 year olds.

Readability Indices
Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease 75.3
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level 5.2
Gunning Fog Score 7
SMOG Index 6.5
Coleman Liau Index 10.9
Automated Readability Index 4.9

Text Statistics
No. of sentences 80
No. of words 733
No. of complex words 87
Percent of complex words 11.87%
Average words per sentence 9.80
Average syllables per word 1.43