Reading, Writing, and the Education Necessary to do both.

Looking at another blog earlier today, I saw that they had a handy badge explaining that you would need a college degree, and possibly some post-grad work to understand their blog.

Being one who's curious about things like readability and reading levels and whatnot, I immediately plugged in the address to the typepad version of this blog and got the result you see here to the left. Now, initially it took me back a little bit. I mean, I've got a bachelor's degree. I've got a Juris Doctor, for crying out loud. I'm supposed to be writing in impenetrable legalese. You should need a post-grad AND Sanskrit AND Benjamin Franklin's magic bifocals from National Treasure to be able to read this blog. Right? Right?

Well, maybe not so much.

I got something of a similar result when I wrote my manuscript. If I pull up that handy dandy Google Doc right now, there's a tool that evaluates the "readability" of the text, which I imagine is based on my vocabulary, length of sentences, number of sentences per paragraph, etc. Looking at "Eyes of the Marauder" (Yes, it's a corny working title.), I get the following results:

Readability	Selection	Document
Average sentences per paragraph:	-	3.84
Average words per sentence:	-	9.54
Average characters per word:	-	4.47
Average words per page:	-	974.66
Flesch Reading Ease: [?]	-	83.68
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?]	-	4.00
Automated Readability Index: [?]	-	4.00

Wow. That sure is a lot of numbers. What does this really mean? Well, I note that the Grade Level of my manuscript is Grade 4. Queso is in Grade 4. So, I should be able to drop my printed manuscript in her lap, tell her to go for it, and she can do her 20 minutes of reading per night. Or I can stick her in front of my blog and do the same thing, though reporting either of those to her teacher might be taken as a sign of narcissism on my part. Or just plain crazy.

My personal feeling is that it takes real skill to be able to describe complex issues in such a way that a ten-year-old can understand it. Parents, you know what I'm talking about, right? Authors, what's your take? Is the sign of a good writer the way they use the four-syllable words or are the best authors the ones who write simply? Or (as is so often the case), am I just totally off base?