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10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays

You’ve probably had this happen to you — after reading for a long time, the lines start to blur together, and you look at the words on the page, but they don’t register in your brain. 

Admissions officers deal with this daily, as they have to scan through thousands of applications each cycle. The volume of applications makes it all the more important to write an essay that’s highly readable, both in terms of physical readability, and how engaging your story is. 

In this post, we’ll share our top 10 tips for writing a college essay that will make admissions officers pay attention.

How to Write a Readable College Essay

1. start your essay with an engaging introduction..

Do you sometimes close out of a video or article because the introduction was boring? With so many things vying for our attention in the modern world, it’s important for introductions to grab our attention right away. This is equally true for college essays.

You want the first lines of your essay to make us want to read more. Some ways to do that are using dialogue, or starting your essay in media res , in the middle of action. 

Here’s an example of an essay introduction that uses dialogue and the technique of in media res .

“1…2…3…4 pirouettes! New record!” My friends cheered as I landed my turns. Pleased with my progress, I gazed down at my worn-out pointe shoes. The sweltering blisters, numbing ice-baths, and draining late-night practices did not seem so bad after all. Next goal: five turns.

And here’s an example of an essay that begins in media res :

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

You’ll see that with these introductions, we’re plunged into the writer’s world, and we get to observe the moment as it’s happening. This makes it easier to relate to the writer, and also makes us wonder what happens next in the story.

2. Break up long paragraphs.

No one wants to read a huge block of text, and this can be another deterrent from paying attention to your essay. The ideal paragraph length is 3-5 sentences, or 50-100 words. This allows you to separate your ideas and to include natural breaks in your writing. 

For example, let’s take a look again at the previous excerpt from a student’s essay on starting a fire. The introduction would’ve been easier to read with a new paragraph beginning with the “As a child” line. This line is a fitting place to separate paragraphs, as it goes from the present moment to a description of the writer’s childhood.

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears.

As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire.

As you read your draft, go through and see if there are any places you could naturally begin a new paragraph, especially if your paragraphs are long. On the flip side, do make sure that not every paragraph is super short. While having one or two standalone lines is fine for dramatic effect, it can look gimmicky to have too many, and it will also diminish their impact.

3. Include dialogue in your anecdotes to bring readers into the moment. 

Dialogue is a powerful tool not only at the beginning of your essay, but also throughout. You can and should use it any time you want to draw attention to what specifically was said, or to bring your essay to a specific moment. 

Using dialogue tends to be much more engaging than summarizing what was said in your own words. Take this excerpt as an example:

No dialogue: My brother told me that I ruined his life. After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

With dialogue: “You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Between the two excerpts, the first feels more like a summary of events than a real glimpse into the writer’s life. Adding dialogue takes the reader to the specific moment that the brother actually uttered those words. 

Of course, dialogue should also be used judiciously, as dialogue can’t always reveal important details like your thoughts during a conversation, what the setting was like, or how you felt. Too much of anything is never a good thing, even if it’s a useful writing technique. (Of course, you could make your essay primarily dialogue if you write it in the form of a script for a movie, but that’s a whole other story).

4. Show, don’t tell. 

You may also know this technique as “indirect characterization” from your English class. If you want to describe a personality trait or event, highlight it through your actions, thoughts, and feelings instead of explicitly stating it. Otherwise, your essay will just read like a report of your experiences, which is boring. 

Here’s an example: say you want to say that someone is arrogant. 

If you were “telling” or “directly characterizing” them, you’d write: Bill is arrogant.

If you were “showing” or “indirectly characterizing,” you’d write: Bill swaggered into the meeting late, with his perpetual sly grin. He shooed the presenter away and shut off the projector. “Hey my dudes, I have a killer idea you just won’t believe. It’s my greatest idea yet, and it’s gonna change the world.” Accustomed to Bill’s exaggerated claims, those in attendance gave each other knowing looks.

While the second version is longer, it gives us a better understanding of Bill’s personality, and it’s much easier to relate to the situation. Simply stating that someone is X or Y trait, or summarizing how something happened, is much less illustrative. As you’re writing, think about ways you can use anecdotes to convey what you want, as these are more engaging.

5. Use impeccable grammar and spelling.

This should go without saying, especially since college admissions officers also use your essay to gauge your writing skills. If your essay has several misspelled words or uses improper grammar, it could make an otherwise engaging essay unreadable.

Use spell check, take the time to proofread carefully, and ask others to give you feedback. And before you submit, print your essay out and read it aloud with a pen in your hand. You’d be surprised at the typos you catch. After you read a document over and over, you start to fill in the words that should be there, and can easily miss a mistake.

6. Vary the length of your sentences.

The best essays flow almost rhythmically. If you use too many short sentences, your essay will feel choppy. If all your sentences are long, readers may get lost or bored. 

You don’t have to alternate short or long sentences in a robotic pattern, but try to naturally incorporate varied sentence length. Similar to the tip about paragraph length, break up any sections with many long sentences by creating new, shorter sentences out of the originals. To do this effectively, choose points where the writing shifts, whether that’s in terms of ideas, time periods, or the subject.

7. Make sure that your essay is logically consistent throughout.

It’s important that different parts of your essay don’t contradict each other. For example, if you describe yourself as shy in one section, don’t paint yourself as outgoing later on, unless it’s clear there was a period of change or personal growth. 

This point is especially important if you’re writing a more academic essay, like the fourth Common App prompt . This prompt asks you to describe a problem you’d like to solve, its personal significance, and potential solutions. Say you want to write your essay on food waste, and your argument is that most of the waste is happening at the production/corporate level, and is due to improper distribution. In this case, don’t write your entire essay on ways individuals can reduce their food waste.

8. Be consistent with your use of slang, acronyms, etc.

Similarly, your language should be as consistent as possible. For example if you use an acronym to describe an organization, you might spell it out the first time with the acronym in parentheses, i.e. “National Honor Society (NHS),” but use the acronym the rest of the time. 

Or, if you use slang like “gonna” in your dialogue, keep using it in the rest of the dialogue, unless the person speaking actually has a more formal tone (which you should make clear). Of course, keep in mind that you probably shouldn’t be using slang like “gonna” in parts of your essay that aren’t dialogue. 

You can, however, use contractions, and they can be a great way to not only lower your character count, but also make your essay feel more conversational. Just be sure to stay consistent with them as well.

9. Avoid excessive repetition of words and phrases.

If you find yourself using the same word over and over again in your essay, consider using synonyms, or rephrasing the sentence. An exception, of course, would be repetition for emphasis. In that case, it should be clear that the repetition is intentional. Otherwise, using the same words and phrases can come off as lazy, and your writing can seem unpolished.

10. Make sure that your verb tenses are consistent. 

Use the same tense throughout your essay, or make sure that there are clear lines of demarcation where you shift tenses. There are few reasons to need to shift tenses, but the most common one is incorporating flashbacks into your essay, or changing time periods. In that case, it would make sense to use present tense for the most recent time period, and past tense for the less recent one.

Here’s an example of an essay that does a good job shifting tenses:

Night had robbed the academy of its daytime colors, yet there was comfort in the dim lights that cast shadows of our advances against the bare studio walls. Silhouettes of roundhouse kicks, spin crescent kicks, uppercuts and the occasional butterfly kick danced while we sparred. She approached me, eyes narrowed with the trace of a smirk challenging me. “Ready spar!” Her arm began an upward trajectory targeting my shoulder, a common first move. I sidestepped — only to almost collide with another flying fist. Pivoting my right foot, I snapped my left leg, aiming my heel at her midsection. The center judge raised one finger. 

There was no time to celebrate, not in the traditional sense at least. Master Pollard gave a brief command greeted with a unanimous “Yes, sir” and the thud of 20 hands dropping-down-and-giving-him-30, while the “winners” celebrated their victory with laps as usual. 

Three years ago, seven-thirty in the evening meant I was a warrior. It meant standing up straighter, pushing a little harder, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am”, celebrating birthdays by breaking boards, never pointing your toes, and familiarity. Three years later, seven-thirty in the morning meant I was nervous. 

The room is uncomfortably large. The sprung floor soaks up the checkerboard of sunlight piercing through the colonial windows. The mirrored walls further illuminate the studio and I feel the light scrutinizing my sorry attempts at a pas de bourrée, while capturing the organic fluidity of the dancers around me. “Chassé en croix, grand battement, pique, pirouette.” I follow the graceful limbs of the woman in front of me, her legs floating ribbons, as she executes what seems to be a perfect ronds de jambes. Each movement remains a negotiation. With admirable patience, Ms. Tan casts me a sympathetic glance.   

There is no time to wallow in the misery that is my right foot. Taekwondo calls for dorsiflexion; pointed toes are synonymous with broken toes. My thoughts drag me into a flashback of the usual response to this painful mistake: “You might as well grab a tutu and head to the ballet studio next door.” Well, here I am Master Pollard, unfortunately still following your orders to never point my toes, but no longer feeling the satisfaction that comes with being a third degree black belt with 5 years of experience quite literally under her belt. It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers. 

But the appetite for new beginnings that brought me here doesn’t falter. It is only reinforced by the classical rendition of “Dancing Queen” that floods the room and the ghost of familiarity that reassures me that this new beginning does not and will not erase the past. After years spent at the top, it’s hard to start over. But surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become. In Taekwondo, we started each class reciting the tenets: honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet. 

The thing about change is that it eventually stops making things so different. After nine different schools, four different countries, three different continents, fluency in Tamil, Norwegian, and English, there are more blurred lines than there are clear fragments. My life has not been a tactfully executed, gold medal-worthy Taekwondo form with each movement defined, nor has it been a series of frappés performed by a prima ballerina with each extension identical and precise, but thankfully it has been like the dynamics of a spinning back kick, fluid, and like my chances of landing a pirouette, unpredictable.

The shift of tenses in this essay is very clear, and it marks a transition from seven years ago to the present day.

Final Thoughts

The readability of your essay is just as important as the content. If your essay is hard to read, it’s unlikely that admissions officers will pay attention. Follow these tips to present your essay in the best possible light, and to make it as engaging as possible. With that, we wish you the best of luck on your essays!

For more inspiration and advice on your college essays, check out these posts:

How to Format and Structure Your College Essay

11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them

How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Readability

What a readability score is and how to use it in your writing

By Ben Long

If you've been looking for ways to improve your writing, there's no doubt you've wondered "what is a readability score?"

What is a readability score?

Readability is a field of study that measures how hard it is understand a piece of text. Writing with a high readability score uses simple vocabulary and short sentences. Readability matters because it makes sure more people can understand your writing.

• Readability is a measure of how easy a piece of text is to read and understand.
• Readability checkers like Flesch-Kincaid are tools that gauge the average level of education needed to understand a piece of writing.
• Increasing the readability of your text ensures that more people will read and comprehend your message.

Why does readability matter?

To make your writing truly impactful, clarity is key. Did you know that over half of adults in the U.S. read at an 8th-grade level? If you want your ideas to connect with this vast audience, you need to simplify your language.

Just like a roller coaster has a height limit, your writing also has a threshold for understanding. If your words are too complex, people can’t enjoy the ride. Use a readability checker to ensure your work can connect with your target audience. Clear writing opens doors and attracts more readers. As you simplify, you’ll see your audience grow.

How does readability affect SEO and user experience?

Readability is crucial for ranking high on Google. Think of it this way: if your content is clear, it will draw people like bees to honey. Google aims to provide valuable information to the greatest number of people. If your text is hard to read, users will quickly turn away, seeking clearer shores.

When your readability shines, visitors linger longer, boosting your SEO ranking. It’s like casting a bigger net to catch more fish. On the flip side, poor readability turns away many potential readers. As you can imagine, this is terrible for your user experience metrics. Search engines want everyone to have access to information, and if your content is only for a select few, it’ll sink in the rankings.

Consider this: if your message is only understood by a few, why should it rank high? Emphasizing accessibility opens doors to a broader audience, which allows your content to stand out. Use Hemingway Editor's free online readability checker to ensure that confusing text doesn't hold you back. Make your words approachable, and watch your audience—and your rankings—grow.

How is readability scored?

For decades, we've used research to create readability tests and calculators. These include the Flesch-Kincaid scale, Gunning Fog Index, and the Automated Readability Index. Each tool analyzes your writing's complexity—measuring average sentence length, syllables, or characters. The result? A numbered grade that reflects the education level needed to grasp your text.

Consider these scores as the report card for your writing. It's an overall view of your text, but in this case lower scores are better. However, remember that these numbers only provide an average for the entire document. Even with a seemingly low score, tricky sentences can lurk in the shadows, ready to trip up your readers.

Hemingway's  free online readability checker  solves this issue with new tools. It provides both an overall score and highlights your most complex sentences. Plus, it updates in real time. As you revise, you can instantly see the impact on readability. This dynamic tool empowers you to sharpen your writing, ensuring your message shines bold and clear.

What is the difference between high readability and low readability?

Think of readability as picking between a breezy beach read or a tough grad school textbook. High readability invites readers in with short, catchy sentences and easy-to-understand words. It's like your favorite bowl of soup—comforting and familiar.

In contrast, low readability feels like wading through thick mud. Dense, complex writing is too hard to understand. It frustrates and exhausts readers. Who wants to battle through confusing jargon? They might just throw your text aside and never look back.

Note: Just because the average grade level of a piece of writing is low on a readability checker, don't assume that it's written for kids. In fact, many popular authors like Ernest Hemingway wrote stories for adults at a 5th-grade level. They preferred the short, punchier style of writing that got to the truth of their experiences without extra fluff.

What is a good reading score for my writing?

Ideal readability scores are not a one-size-fits-all solution; they vary greatly. Instead, let your audience shape what reading ease score you should aim for. For instance, most adults read at an 8th-grade level, making it a smart choice for broader communication.

If accessibility is a concern, like writing for ESL students or younger readers, a fourth-grade level is even better. This ensures you use common words and clear, simple sentences that they can understand. As attention spans shorten, lower grade levels are becoming even more common targets. Many marketers have dropped their writing to a fourth-grade level and seen even better success.

Now, let’s talk about specialized writing like legal documents or technical manuals. For those complex topics, simplifying everything isn't always possible. Sometimes, it’s necessary to sacrifice ease of reading for clearer technical explanations. In such cases, a twelfth-grade level works well for detailed documents or industry jargon.

How to improve the readability of your writing

• Run your text through a  free online readability checker  like the Hemingway Editor app. This allows you to see the current grade level of your writing and sections to improve.
• Drop the jargon. Replace complex terms with simpler synonyms that mean the same thing.
• Break up long, complicated sentences. Instead of writing one long sentence containing several ideas, write a series of shorter sentences that hold one idea each.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is readability.

Readability is a measure of how easy or hard it is to read and understand a piece of text. It is usually determined by the level of education required to comprehend the writing.

A readability score is the average level of education required to understand a piece of writing without difficulty. Tools like the Flesch-Kincaid grade level average judge text and provide a readability score.

What is a good readability score?

Using a readability formula like the Flesch-Kincaid tool, Gunning Fog score, or Automated Readability Index, follow these guidelines to find your ideal readability level:

• Accessible writing (i.e., for younger students or ESL readers)—4th grade level
• The average adult reader in the United States—8th grade level or lower
• Technical writing and advanced readers—12th grade level

How can I check the readability score of my writing?

Use Hemingway's  free readability checker app . It provides the overall readability score of your text, as well as highlighting complex sentences.

What are the best readability measures?

Readability tools like the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level , Gunning Fog Index, Dale-Chall Readability Grade, and Automated Readability Index are classic readability formulas. These readability tests use similar methods to calculate the approximate reading grade level of your writing. Hemingway Editor Plus has a free online readability checker that builds on and improves these older tools. It finds both the average grade level of your document as a whole and highlights your most complex sentences.

Try Hemingway Editor Plus

Hemingway Editor Plus fixes common writing issues like wordy sentences, passive voice, and more — with the click of a button.

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Erin Wright Writing

Writing-Related Software Tutorials

Understanding Readability Scores

By Erin Wright

Do you want to skip to the instructions for accessing Microsoft Word’s readability statistics? Click here.

The Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formulas

Readability tests tell us how difficult or easy a text is to read. In the United States, our primary readability tests are the Flesch Reading Ease formula and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level formula. Flesch Reading Ease was created by reading expert Rudolf Flesch and popularized in his 1949 book The Art of Readable Writing .  The formula uses average sentence lengths and average syllable counts to produce a score between 0 and 100, with higher scores having lower levels of complexity. Notice that the scores differ for children and adults: 1

In 1975, scientist J. Peter Kincaid created the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula for the U.S. Navy. It converts Flesch Reading Ease scores into grade-based scores. 2 Here are a few examples:

• 0 to 1 equals preschool to first grade.
• 6 to 7 equals sixth to seventh grade.
• 11 to 12 equals the junior to senior year in high school.
• 13 and above equals the collegiate level and beyond.

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula has since become a standard for the United States Department of Defense and other government agencies. 3

Do you want to skip to the conclusion? Click here.

Accessing Readability Statistics in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has a built-in function that provides Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scores. The following instructions apply to Word for Office 365, Word 2019, Word 2016, and Word 2013 . However, the steps are similar for Word 2010 and 2007.

Turn on the readability statistics function:

1. Select File in the toolbar.

2. Select Options on the left-hand side of the Backstage view.

3. Select Proofing in the Word Options window.

4. Check Show readability statistics .

5. Select Recheck document if the document is already in progress. (This step isn’t necessary for blank documents.)

6. Select OK to save your changes.

Access the readability statistics:

1. Select Review in the toolbar.

2. Select Spelling & Grammar . (Note that Word for Office 365 and Word 2019 say Check Document instead of Spelling & Grammar.)

3. Complete the Grammar Check if it has not already been completed.

4. Review your scores at the bottom of the Readability Statistics window. (This window won’t appear until the Grammar Check has been completed.)

Applying Readability Scores to Your Content

How should we apply readability scores to our own content? Truth be told, there is no right or wrong answer because everyone’s audience is different. Microsoft Word recommends keeping general content between the seventh and eighth-grade level. 4 Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services requires that most of its material be written at the tenth-grade level. 3 And, consumer insurance forms in Texas must have a Flesch Reading Ease of 40 or higher, which is appropriate for high school graduates. 5

But comprehension is based on more than sentence length and syllable counts. Subject matter, content structure, and our own cultural knowledge all influence our understanding of what we read. So, instead of sticking to one specific number, consider using readability scores as guideposts that can help you create clear content that meets your audience’s unique needs.

I’d love to hear if your business has a readability policy based on a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Flesch Reading Ease, or another formula.

(In case you’re wondering, this post’s Flesch Reading Ease score is 53.5 and its Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 9.0.) _________________

1. Rudolf Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing (New York: Harper & Row, 1949), 149-50.

2. “Flesch–Kincaid readability tests,” Wikipedia , last modified February 28, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests .

3. “Readability – Frequently Asked Questions,” Oregon.gov , accessed March 13, 2014, http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/pages/readability.aspx.

4. “Test your document’s readability,” Office.com , accessed March 13, 2014, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/test-your-document-s-readability-HP010354286.aspx .

5. “Adoption of Flesch Reading Ease Test,” TDI.Texas.gov , accessed March 13, 2014, http://www.tdi.texas.gov/pubs/pc/pccpfaq.html .

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How to Use Readability Scores

By The ProWritingAid Team

Why Is Readability Important?

What are readability scores, how to use the readability report, what do high readability scores mean for your reader, put your document to the readability test.

It might seem counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to prove yourself as a talented author is to make your work easier to read, not harder. If your language is too difficult for your readers to easily understand, you'll turn them off from reading. It's not about impressing by showing off all the fancy words you know; it's about making your work accessible and enjoyable.

ProWritingAid's Readability Report gives you an idea of how easy (or difficult) your work is to read and makes recommendations for areas that you can change to improve your document's readability . In this article, we'll cover how you can learn about your document's readability using ProWritingAid.

Two different ProWritingAid reports give you your readability scores:

1) The Summary Report

The Summary Report provides you with a variety of readability scores that have been calculated using some of the top tools out there. It also breaks down your readability by paragraph, highlighting how many easy-to-read, slightly difficult-to-read, and very difficult-to-read paragraphs are in your document.

2) The Readability Report

The Readability Report goes into more depth, identifying exactly which paragraphs are easy or difficult to read so you can dive right in and make needed changes. The Readability Report also offers an estimated reading time for your document.

Today we're looking at how you can use the Readability Report to improve the clarity of your writing.

The Readability Report uses readability scores to determine how easy your writing is to understand.

A readability score is a number that tells you how easy it is for someone to read your work. Readability scores look at factors like sentence length, syllable density, and word familiarity to tell you what groups of readers will be able to access your text.

Different readability checks use different scoring systems, but they all work in basically the same way, telling you what level of reader could understand your work. For instance, a readability score that equates to seventh grade means that an average seventh grader could read and understand your work.

You can use ProWritingAid's Readability Report to dial into the paragraphs in your document that need to be easier to read. ProWritingAid can take you paragraph by paragraph and show you what needs to be changed to improve readability.

When you run the readability report, each paragraph is highlighted with how difficult it is to read. A green underline means the work is easy to read; yellow means it is more difficult; red text is the most difficult to read. You'll also get your Flesch–Kincaid score so you can see how close the paragraph is to your goal score.

You can see these features demonstrated in the screenshot below:

Each highlighted paragraph is listed in the review panel to the left of the editor. Hover over a listed paragraph to reveal the navigation bar, and use the arrow icon to jump to that paragraph in your text.

It's up to you as an author to use your discretion to change parts of your work that will help your reader, while still maintaining the integrity of what you're trying to convey.

You can use the other ProWritingAid reports to help make your writing more readable. The Style Report is a good place to start.

The higher the readability score, the more advanced your text is and the harder it is to comprehend. A readability score of twelfth grade, for instance, means that anyone with a lesser vocabulary will struggle to be able to fully understand what you’ve written.

If one of your documents earns a high readability score, it can mean a number of different things:

• You’re using too much jargon. When you use jargon, you’re using specialized, domain-specific terms that are difficult for your reader to understand.
• Your sentences are too long. Long, windy sentences can increase your readability scores. Write the way you speak: simply and clearly.
• Your vocabulary is too advanced. While complicated words might earn you tons of points in Scrabble, they’re typically a barrier of entry for your readers. You don’t need to make your vocabulary super complicated to prove that you’re an effective writer.

These are just some of the issues that might be affecting your readability scores.

As Albert Einstein said:

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

That being said: you know your audience. If you're writing a technical manual, your work will be at a higher level than if you're writing a children's book. Consider what the people reading your document will understand when interpreting your readability scores.

The Readability Report and Summary Report can help you identify areas in your work that you can simplify or make more clear for your readers. This will provide a better reading experience for your readers.

One final note: you are the judge and jury about making readability changes. While ProWritingAid uses a pretty heavy-hitting algorithm, it still is just an algorithm and doesn’t understand your audience like you do. You make the final decision on what to change and what to leave to make your work stand out from the crowd and stay in line with your unique voice.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

The ProWritingAid Team

The most successful people in the world have coaches. Whatever your level of writing, ProWritingAid will help you achieve new heights. Exceptional writing depends on much more than just correct grammar. You need an editing tool that also highlights style issues and compares your writing to the best writers in your genre. ProWritingAid helps you find the best way to express your ideas.

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How, when and why to use readability formulas to improve your academic writing

There are many tools that measure readability scores, but few contexts in which they’re useful for academics.

• One comment

@lertitia Hey, #AskDrEditor, what about readability formulas and indices? Apparently some of my writing is at a 19th grade level. What grade level should an academic writer shoot for? — Dr LE Doyle 👩‍🔬🧬 (@RaincityBones) June 24, 2019

Dr. Editor’s response:

There’s no appropriate grade level. Ignore the formulas. They’re inadequate for your needs. Am I painting with too broad a brush, here? Perhaps I am: there are certain, limited contexts in which I see the value in readability formulas. But, for the most part, they won’t help you with assessing the readability of any academic work that goes through peer review. Let’s explore the range of readability indices and the ways that they may help you to communicate important concepts clearly.

Accessing and interpreting your readability score

Readability formulas are algorithms designed to assess how easy to read your writing is (or isn’t). Some provide you with the grade level for which your writing is appropriate: newspapers, for example, are supposed to be written for a reading level between Grades 9 to 11, while Donald Trump’s speeches need a Grade 5 level of education to understand ( Kayam ). Other readability formulas give you a score from zero to 100, with higher numbers indicating increasing ease of reading.

Lots of free websites will auto-calculate the readability score of a piece of text that you cut and paste into their site – I mentioned two of my favourites , Hemingway App and Count Wordsworth, in my March 2019 column. If you use Microsoft Word or Google Docs for your writing, you can use their built-in tools to get your readability level; other commonly used platforms – Apple Pages, Scrivener, and LaTeX—don’t auto-compute readability statistics.

A site like Count Wordsworth will give you multiple different measurements of your text’s readability:

• Flesch Reading Ease is a score out of 100, with zero (hardest) being a Grade 12 reading level, and 100 (easiest) being a Grade 4 reading level.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is the school year or grade at which your reader must be comfortable in order to understand your text.
• Dale-Chall Formula is a score out of 10, with 4.9 or lower (easiest) being understood by the average Grade 4 reader, and 9.0+ (hardest) being understood by a college-level reader.
• Gunning Fog Index corresponds with grade level (i.e., a score of six is a Grade 6 reading level), with 12 being the maximum recommended score for texts to be read by the general public.
• FORECAST Grade Level – like Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog – has a score that correlates with grade level, but this one was developed for non-narrative texts (e.g., forms, multiple choice texts) and so does not include sentence length in its calculations.

There are at least a half-dozen others. These formulas are often used to calculate the clarity of, for instance, health-care information, but they’ve also been applied to contexts as varied as U.S. State of the Union addresses and website privacy policies .

Below are the readability scores for this very article, as calculated by Count Wordsworth:

Limitations of readability scores

Like any heuristic, readability formulas have limitations. They’re a blunt instrument, built on flawed methods – the belief, for example, that “governmental” is a harder word to read than “bilk,” because “governmental” has four times the number of syllables and three times the number of letters as the shorter word. (“To cheat; to avoid paying,” by the way.)

Similarly, short sentences with short words will receive great readability scores even if they are nonsense. “Mike eats your cat gun now!” is both highly readable and utterly incomprehensible.

A quick scan of the research literature on readability formulas reinforces the legitimacy of these concerns. In the context of patient education materials, Badarudeen and Sabharwal provide a helpful table breaking down the advantages and disadvantages of most of the common readability formulas, noting, for instance, that readability scores can be misleading when one of their indicators is word length: Flesch-Kincaid is “solely based on polysyllable words and long sentences,” and so “may underestimate reading difficulty of medical jargon that may contain short but unfamiliar words” (p.2575). Assessing the usefulness of readability formulas in survey design, Lenzner concludes that readability “formulas’ judgments are often misleading” (p.692), and so recommends that, in contrast to common practice, formulas “should not be used for testing and revising draft [survey] questions” (p.693).

Using readability scales appropriately

Because of the flawed assumptions that underlie their construction, and because of the conclusions of the research assessing these tools, I advise against paying attention to readability formulas in any academic writing context in which you are addressing your peers: not for journal articles, monographs, reviews, or grant applications.

If you’re concerned about your readers’ ability to understand you in these contexts, don’t rely on a flawed assessment of readability. Instead, have a look at the tips on my blog , or invest in hiring an editor .

There are a few contexts in which it may be handy to run your words through a readability checker or other quick-and-dirty assessment of your writing (for instance, the red and green highlighting at Hemingway App), such as:

• quickly written but important student-facing documents: how-to instructions, descriptions of assignments, feedback on assignments;
• lay summaries in grant applications; and,
• lengthy emails.

But targeting your academic writing for a certain grade-level reader? The formulas won’t help you there. I don’t trust their results, and I wouldn’t advise spending time tweaking your writing in an attempt to change a readability score.

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This was incredibly helpful during my recent doctorate application process. Thank you!