Reading level

Laer Carroll said:

If you look at the several mechanical measures of reading level they all boil down to counting the number of syllables in each word and number of words in each sentence. More in each is labeled a "higher" reading level. I'd instead label them LOWER, because it's often the shortest words and sentences which have the most emotional impact and the most vivid images.

Four score and seven years ago ...

It was the best of times and the worst of times,...

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff ...

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I don't know about the last one for sure, but the first two are the beginnings of long sentences. "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." (And the rest of the Gettysburg Address is composed of several very long sentences, too.) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, etc." (Granted, this is comma splicing at its finest, but still.)

Sorry, I'm weirdly pedantic today.

In any case, I write at a *decidedly* adult level. I use any big word that fits and do not hold back, and nor do I simplify sentence structure. My intended audience can handle that, and I think that people at a lower reading level can catch on and figure out any unfamiliar words from context and/or a dictionary. If not, then . . . you may not be the intended audience.

angeliz2k said:

I don't know about the last one for sure

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"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

In any case, I write at a *decidedly* adult level. I use any big word that fits and do not hold back, and nor do I simplify sentence structure. My intended audience can handle that, and I think that people at a lower reading level can catch on and figure out any unfamiliar words from context and/or a dictionary.

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And that is how people can become the intended audience. I approach it the same way.

Re the opening of A Tale of Two Cities: Rhetorically, it is a sophisticated and lyrical piece of writing. Semi-colons would have interfered with that marvelous flow. Besides, it was written in a different century, when they'd probably never heard of a comma splice.

I've been delving into this issue lately on two unrelated projects.

1. At work, I'm trying to improve the SEO on our company's product websites. Because we're a chemical company with a lot of techie types contributing to our info, our Flesch reading ease scores are terrible. The Flesch scale goes from 1 (most difficult to read) to 100 (a first grader can read it). Most of our stuff is in the 40s at best, and I have to try to drag them up to the 60 or higher that search engines prefer. It's a nasty job. I can't recommend it.

2. At home, I'm proofing my novel with Pro-Writing Aid. Apparently, my fiction is for the elementary set because my Flesh scores are consistently in the mid 80s to low 90s. Granted, in this current work my POV/protagonist is a teenage boy, so he's often using simpler language than I would. But he's no Forrest Gump.

With fiction, I'm far more concerned with staying true to the voice of my POV character than achieving any particular score. Maybe I should have my POV character re-write all the articles on the company product sites.

angeliz2k said:

I don't know about the last one for sure, but the first two are the beginnings of long sentences. "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." (And the rest of the Gettysburg Address is composed of several very long sentences, too.) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, etc." (Granted, this is comma splicing at its finest, but still.)

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That's not a comma splice; that's an example of anaphora, among other rhetorical figures. Again, this is a deliberate stylistic choice and the use of anaphora over-rides concern about independent clauses and the comma.

This is a pattern you'll see frequently in poetry, as well as rhetorically complex prose.

IMO, you ought to write using whatever vocabulary you are comfortable using and that suits the story you are trying to tell.

It's 2018. Most people have smart phones or at least some form of internet access and can easily look up any word they don't understand and can't decipher from context clues. Besides, if you try to write to a certain level, you're just going to give yourself added stress. You'd be amazed what words people know or don't know, regardless of age or education.

I once gave my MS to a university educated co-worker to read and she complained about not understanding several words in it. I don't remember all of the words she struggled with, but I do recall her misreading the word "erratic" as "erotic" and when I corrected her she had no idea what erratic meant. She also didn't understand the word "pallid." My education level? High school graduate.

Miss Vicky said:

I once gave my MS to a university educated co-worker to read and she complained about not understanding several words in it. I don't remember all of the words she struggled with, but I do recall her misreading the word "erratic" as "erotic" and when I corrected her she had no idea what erratic meant. She also didn't understand the word "pallid." My education level? High school graduate.

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So, she never once read "The Raven" with the pallid bust of Pallas just above the chamber door?

Slightly OT, but reading experience tends to trump educational experience when it comes to vocabulary, IMHO. The more words you read, the more you pick up, and the better you are at figuring out new words. (Does nobody teach context clues anymore? We learned that in elementary school...)

Brightdreamer said:

...It's not that you should always avoid the five-dollar words; it's that you should use them only when they're the best word for the job, and should avoid constructing million-dollar sentences and paragraphs just for the sake of showing off your vocabulary budget, if that analogy makes sense.
...
(...They just generally prefer not having to pause every other sentence to figure out a word, not unlike many adult readers.)

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Tell that to GRRM - I've got literally a few pages of words I had to look up because of his writing...and I would consider myself fairly educated and well-read.

Brightdreamer said:

...
Slightly OT, but reading experience tends to trump educational experience when it comes to vocabulary, IMHO. The more words you read, the more you pick up, and the better you are at figuring out new words. (Does nobody teach context clues anymore? We learned that in elementary school...)

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Totally agree - I know some very educated people who are functionally non-readers and whose vocabulary is woefully pathetic. Equally, I know people who are high school dropouts that have read more than most and as a result, have incredible vocabularies!

Well, 'anthropomorphism', at least, seems like a perfectly natural 'big word' for that step up from picture books to chapter books -even if the author doesn't spell it out.
'It was an anthropomorphic bear - wearing overalls and pushing a wheelbarrow. Jimmy though he looked just like Grampa Bear in his picture books.'
'A rabbit, not a 'real' rabbit, but a rabbit in a little jacket, with a carrot like cigar stuck in it's mouth. Just like Beatrix Potter. Only bigger. A man in the shape of a rabbit. Or, a rabbit, playing at being a man.'

Only better written, and more suited to whatever your story actually is.

Miss Vicky said:

I once gave my MS to a university educated co-worker to read and she complained about not understanding several words in it. I don't remember all of the words she struggled with, but I do recall her misreading the word "erratic" as "erotic" and when I corrected her she had no idea what erratic meant. She also didn't understand the word "pallid." My education level? High school graduate.

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When I was studying for a degree in English literature and Classics (ancient Greek & Latin lit) I had not one, but TWO university lecturers accuse me of plagiarism because I used words they thought were above university student level, and they themselves could not understand. I remember that one was impugn. The other might have been ubiquitous, although I'd be surprised if that one was queried by the classics professor, since it's a Latin word!

After proving that I hadn't plagiarised a thing, I just had more advanced vocab, I think I got into competition with myself to see how many obscure words I could get into my essays to try and catch them out. I had to stop that when I started writing fiction - took out at least one 'ubiquitous' in editing

Toto Too said:

Microsoft Word says I'm writing at a first grade level. So I hope your theory is right, or else maybe I should consider re-enrolling in elementary school.

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Nah, I call bullshit on Word fwiw Microsoft word says I'm writing at Flesch-Kincaid grade 5, too, which is equivalent to picture books (somewhere between the gruffalo and harry potter). https://readable.io/blog/the-flesch-reading-ease-and-flesch-kincaid-grade-level/

I think it just has no idea how to cope with all the fantasy/sff words, or at least that's my guess.

I mean, I'm not saying my writing is some kinds of physics report level of complex, but it's not a picture book for sure.

I've been following this thread and I realized over the past few days that I've been unconsciously dumbing down my vocabulary in everyday speech—apparently, for years. Also, I've learned alternative uses for lesser-used words from my favorite authors such as "floruit" (Ursula K. Le Guin) which cut down on the number of words I have to use sometimes. Upshot: I refuse to dumb down my writing; my mantra remains "the right word is the right word".

You can have my big vocabulary when you pry it from my hypothermic, cadaverous phalanges.

Kallithrix said:

When I was studying for a degree in English literature and Classics (ancient Greek & Latin lit) I had not one, but TWO university lecturers accuse me of plagiarism because I used words they thought were above university student level, and they themselves could not understand. I remember that one was impugn. The other might have been ubiquitous, although I'd be surprised if that one was queried by the classics professor, since it's a Latin word!

After proving that I hadn't plagiarised a thing, I just had more advanced vocab, I think I got into competition with myself to see how many obscure words I could get into my essays to try and catch them out. I had to stop that when I started writing fiction - took out at least one 'ubiquitous' in editing

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My mind's ablown. The word ubiquitous is so ... so ... so ... widespread. How could a classics lecturer not have heard it???

Also, mind's ablown that some people have a concept of words that are 'above university level'.

Albedo said:

You can have my big vocabulary when you pry it from my hypothermic, cadaverous phalanges.

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(I suspect what happened with me was that continually pausing to define a word became so very enervating.)

Albedo said:

You can have my big vocabulary when you pry it from my hypothermic, cadaverous phalanges.

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Albedo said:

The word ubiquitous is so ... so ... so ... widespread.

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Brightdreamer said:

reading experience tends to trump educational experience when it comes to vocabulary

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Definitely.

Kallithrix said:

When I was studying for a degree in English literature and Classics (ancient Greek & Latin lit) I had not one, but TWO university lecturers accuse me of plagiarism because I used words they thought were above university student level, and they themselves could not understand. I remember that one was impugn. The other might have been ubiquitous, although I'd be surprised if that one was queried by the classics professor, since it's a Latin word!

After proving that I hadn't plagiarised a thing, I just had more advanced vocab, I think I got into competition with myself to see how many obscure words I could get into my essays to try and catch them out. I had to stop that when I started writing fiction - took out at least one 'ubiquitous' in editing

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Ubiquitous is pretty ubiquitous though. I'm surprised it's even considered obscure...

indianroads said:

Just recently I had to define this word for a friend who is a retired engineer - apparently it's not as common as I believed.

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That sounds like the charitable interpretation!

indianroads said:

I've decided to leave everything in my WIP as is. If readers look at it on Kindle they can just select the word and get the definition... and in so doing build their vocabulary.

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In his children's books, Alan Garner uses a lot of regional vernacular. Readers have to work out the meanings from context. And crime writer Reginald Hill loved unusual words. Every Dalziel and Pascoe book is an adventure in language.

I agree with those above stressing the importance of the flow of the vocabulary over the grade level. Some authors I enjoy use a lot of vocabulary that isn't in my everyday use and I end up googling some words every few pages, but if it flows, it doesn't hinder my experience as the reader. I enjoy the challenge of interpreting new words as I find them in reading, but am often put off by authors who sound like they are going out of their way to "sound smart". There is nothing that will ruin the cadence of a good read more than randomly placed "higher level" words that don't match the level of the surrounding text. So, as others have said, don't overthink it. Just use your voice.

indianroads said:

Does this same rule still apply?

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Yes. And, like all rules, when you understand why, you'll understand why to break it.

Jeff