- Figure the readability of the first draft of your story. Post as comment. Be prepared to report.
- Readability – Figuring the Fog Index
- Paste into Gunning Fog Calculator
- Comment
- Reblog
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The Blue Pencil 
So … it turns out my readability score is 12.82. I had 73 major punctuation marks, 1457 words and 176 3+ syllable words. However, most of the 3+ syllable words were things like: department, professor, committee, university, however and faculty — words that are fairly simple. I guess I would have to disagree with the calculator a bit as I don’t think it would take someone almost in college to understand what I wrote. It does show me that I need to work on my wordiness and to keep my story a little more simple.
The gunning fog index for my story was 15.57, so basically someone well into college. The number of major punctuation marks was 33, the number of words was 871 and the number of 3+ syllable words was 113.
I think the calculator’s a little off because I think a fairly intelligent high school senior would have no problem understanding my story. My biggest downfall with my stories, however, does tend to be wordiness. When I edit my draft, I need to focus on cutting out needless words and transitions and making my sentences more concise.
You can edit the numbers above and recalculate
The Gunning Fog index is 11.26.
The number of major punctuation marks was 50.
The number of words was 893.
The number of 3+ syllable words was 92.
I hit the goal of getting an index less than 12, but as this is only the first draft of my story, it could drift above 12 at any time. I should be careful to not oversimplify things that need more explanation.
Wow, the readability of my story was 20.2. Perhaps because my masterpiece featured 3 punctuation marks for 115 words or because I had 14 3+ syllable words, my story can only be read by folks that are on the verge of their Ph.D. Probably better that way anyway, as I prefer only scholarly minds devouring my eloquent prose. Honestly, this means I better get with it or I will find myself fired from my first real job.
My story’s readability level was at 12.63. This was due to having 81 punctuation marks, 831 words and more than 100 words with three or more syllables. I was surprised by the score because I expected to have a lower score. I thought I made my sentences puposefully short and clear and that I could maybe add some complexity to it. Some of the three-syllable words were simple ones like “university” and “Florida,” which aren’t going to confuse anyone. I am satisfied that my story will be easily understood.
My story currently has a readability index of 15.39. There are 65 major punctuation marks in my 1,400-word story, including 237 words of three syllables or more. This number is a few points higher than my desired readability index of 12, but I refuse to believe that it would take a third-year college student to understand my story. As Rene mentioned, many of the highlighted three-syllable words were ones like semester, withdrawal, committee, and other words I do not consider to be extremely difficult to read. I think my problem stems predominantly from my wordiness and my run-on sentences (I’m a bit of a comma freak). While I do need to clean up my story with some concision and focus, I think the fog index should serve more as a guide than an actual assessment of readability.
As I’m reading everyone else’s comments, I’m thinking I may have done my math wrong. But then I ran it through the Word program and got a similar answer.
My Gunning Fog Index is 7 and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 6.1. It seems that my sentences are simple and I don’t use very many words with more than three syllables. I think I counted seven in my 100-word section. Again, that was my introduction and I did use a lot of simple sentences and simple words for a certain affect.
I know how important it is for writers to make sure thier articles are easily understood by a vass majority of people. My mom is a teacher in the public school system, and she is constantly told to write at an eighth-grade level or below.
I think the Gunning Fog index should be a guideline for most mainstream writing, but you can definitely throw some of this out the window if you write for a more narrow publication (for instance, a medical journal or law review).
Gunning Fog Index – 13.45
Major punctuation marks – 35
Words – 808
3+ syllable words – 86
A lot of the 3 syllable words in my story were common and easy to understand (for example, department or manager), but I should also shorten a lot of my sentences. In general, I think this calculator is useful, but not a fix-all.
index-12.4
700 words
31 major punctuation marks
63 3+ syllable words
fun to look at, but it over analyzes the usage of big words
index-13.6
77 major punctuation marks
1473 words
219 3+ syllables
I felt kind of stupid when I saw how high my index is. Sorry if this seems very “misery loves company”-ish, but I was kind of glad to see that mine wasn’t the only one with college readability!
My story’s Gunning Fog index is 12.37 – so a little above target, and supposedly the reading level of a college freshman.
The number of major punctuation marks was 48.
The number of words was 894.
The number of 3+ syllable words was 110.
As everyone else has said, I don’t know how accurate a test this is. Most of my 3+ syllable words were also easily understood and were the same as everyone else’s: Florida, finally, however, etc. (Oddly, it also counted “sometimes” as having 3 or more syllables.)
I think part of the problem is prefixes/suffixes. “Disconnect” isn’t much harder to understand than “connect”; if you understand “require,” you should be able to make the leap to understanding “requirement.”
Gunning Fog Index- 10.45
Major punctuation- 71
Words 835
3+-syllable words- 120
It seems my story has a desired readability level. I tend to write simply in my stories, yet I was still expecting a higher index because of the nature of this particular story. The word “acupuncture” appears several times throughout my story, and was counted as a four-syllable word, yet there is no alternative word I could have used. Interestingly, “curiosity” is also counted as a complex word since it has five syllables.
I question the accuracy involved in equating complexity with multiple syllables. There are many monosyllabic words that I’m sure the average high school senior would not know. These doubts aside, and when considering that many of my three-syllable and four-syllable words are in fact simple words, perhaps my story’s readability level is really much lower than 10.45.