Text Readability Analysis

Readability checker: which scores you get

Paste text or a page URL and the checker returns six classic readability formulas, the basic text statistics behind them and a separate block of style metrics. All six formulas use the same three ingredients: average sentence length in words, average word length in syllables or letters, and the share of long words. They do not read meaning; they measure how much effort sentences and words demand.

The Flesch Reading Ease bands are the ones Flesch published: 90–100 very easy, 80–89 easy, 70–79 fairly easy, 60–69 standard, 50–59 fairly difficult, 30–49 difficult, 0–29 very difficult. The grade-level scores usually land within two or three grades of each other. If one formula disagrees sharply with the rest, look at what it weighs: a text full of long names inflates SMOG and Fog, a text with many short sentences lowers Flesch-Kincaid.

How the checker counts

Knowing the counting rules helps explain odd results:

• Sentences end at ., !, ? or …. Headings and list items without a final full stop merge into the next sentence and make it look longer. Abbreviations such as "e.g." and decimals such as "3.5" add extra sentence breaks.
• Syllables in English are estimated from vowel groups, with a rule for a silent final e and the endings -es and -ed. The estimate is close for most words and off for some names and loanwords. Coleman-Liau and ARI do not use syllables at all, so they are a useful cross-check.
• Words are runs of letters and digits; hyphenated words and contractions count as one word.

The numbers under the table show the base of the calculation: words, sentences and syllables per word. For a stable result use at least 100 words; SMOG needs about 30 sentences.

Readability in other languages: an honest note

All six formulas were calibrated on English texts and English-speaking readers. Their coefficients assume English word length. Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and German words are longer on average, so the same clear text gets a lower Flesch score and a higher grade level than an English text of similar difficulty. The checker still computes the scores for these languages, with syllables counted from vowels, but treat them as relative: compare two versions of the same text, or your articles with each other, not with English thresholds such as "60 or higher".

For Russian, the checker also shows the adaptation by I. V. Oborneva, 206.835 − 1.3 × words/sentence − 60.1 × syllables/word, which rescales Flesch for Russian word length. There is no equally established adaptation for Ukrainian; for Polish, the Jasnopis project from SWPS University offers a readability tool designed for Polish.

How to improve a readability score

1. Shorten the longest sentences first. Sentence length drives every formula. Split sentences over 25 words at "and", "but", "which" and semicolons.
2. Prefer the shorter word. "Use" instead of "utilize", "help" instead of "facilitate", "about" instead of "approximately". Each swap removes syllables.
3. Cut nominalisations. "Make a decision" becomes "decide", "carry out an analysis" becomes "analyse".
4. Use lists for steps and options. Put a full stop or line break at the end of each item; otherwise the checker counts the whole list as one sentence.
5. Keep necessary terms. A technical audience needs exact words. Lower the score through sentence length, not by replacing terms with vague ones.
6. Vary the rhythm. A run of identical short sentences scores well but reads as choppy. Mix short and medium sentences.

Style metrics and the artificiality score

Below the readability table, the checker shows metrics from the TextHumanize analyser: the share of bureaucratic phrases, stock connectors ("moreover", "in conclusion"), repetitions, typography issues, burstiness (how much sentence length varies) and an overall artificiality score from 0 to 100. These are not readability formulas. They flag patterns typical of template or machine-written text: even sentence lengths, repeated connectors, officialese. A low readability score with high artificiality usually means long, uniform sentences; fix the rhythm first.

To go further, check the tone and formality in the tone analyzer, repeated words in the keyword density checker, and spelling and grammar in the grammar checker.