Had a lie in, wrenched myself from nice warm bed, dropped Julia at work (she starts at 11.00 on Saturdays, in case you were wondering how this fits with the lie in), took some books to a charity shop, bought some books from the charity shop, made sandwiches for lunch, checked bird reports, checked WordPress, checked Isle of Mull, checked telescopes and digiscoping, picked Julia up from work, made corned beef hash (with mashed root veg and stir fried cabbage), ordered a bokashi bucket on-line, cancelled order when they messed me about at the checkout, went shopping and, finally, wrote a long boring sentence about my long, boring day.
That’s the bare bones of it. It’s also the longest sentence I have ever written. One hundred and nine words. According to the experts that is enough words for four or five sentences. I’m pretty sure that it will be considered difficult to read. There is a figure I’ve seen somewhere that indicates most people can’t follow a sentence past 30 words.
I’ve just put a sample of my writing through a readability calculator and come up with the following –
Flesch Reading Ease score: 70.7 (text scale)
Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: fairly easy to read.
Gunning Fog: 11.3 (text scale)
Gunning Fog scored your text: hard to read.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.6
Grade level: Ninth Grade.
The Coleman-Liau Index: 7
Grade level: Seventh Grade
The SMOG Index: 7.8
Grade level: Eighth grade
Automated Readability Index: 8.4
Grade level: 12-14 yrs. old (Seventh and Eighth graders)
Linsear Write Formula : 12.1
Grade level: Twelfth Grade.
Readability Consensus
House work is never ending though! at least you can put the book down! haha
If you’re interested in Charity shopping, I’ve just written a review on Octavia Foundation, Tooting. Have a read and spread the word on the good work that they do: tootinghustle.wordpress.com
Happy blogging x
Thanks, will do.
Housework never goes away. There is always something newly dirtied needing cleaning. 🙂
death, taxes and housework… difficult to avoid.
Boring day, but not a boring post. To be honest, I didn’t think it was hard to read. Perhaps because, although the sentence was long, it was well punctuated, which is surely a form of courtesy, but seems to be a dying art. Oh dear – I sound like a whinging old…
I will almost certainly not be able to resist the temptation to try the readability test. Next time I’m bored.
Nothing wrong with liking punctuation. The test is interesting, though like so much of my activity, it is a great displacement activity. 🙂
I would say that life in general is boring but that makes me sound a little like Marvin the Paranoid Android. You managed to include a lot of activity into your boring day
Yes, a lot of life is dull, particularly as it’s hard to find new things to do. A lot of the new things I could do, like skydiving and swimming with sharks, aren’t actually things I want to do. 🙂
Me neither – ugh!
Housework just leaves you worrying about how dirty everything is. This is something that you don’t notice until you start doing housework. Stick to improving your prose style (if that is possible, it seems good to me) and leave the housework to those who like worrying.
Sounds like good advice. I will tell Julia and see what she says…
I can guess.
She’s always been funny about housework…
I just edited Lou’s blog post, which scored 60% on the Flesch, and which the SEO addon found acceptable. After I finished, Flesch said 59%, which was considered too difficult for the average reader. I was asked to shorten my sentences. I’d been tweaking this post for a long time, and gave up in overwhelm mode. I think, at least here on wordpress.com, we are writing among friends, and who cares?
Yes, I think it’s fair to say we’re among friends, and that we are all good readers. I’ve never had difficulty reading your posts. 🙂
I got readability of 13-15 years old. Now is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The average reading age of the UK is 9. The Sun aims for a reading age of 8 and the Guardian 14. I think 13-15 is fine, though I’m going to look at reducing mine.
http://www.see-a-voice.org/marketing-ad/effective-communication/readability/
I’ll have a look at your link. Not sure I want to reduce the reading age of my posts but was actually somewhat surprised that the bit I had examined was in the 13-15 year range.
I’ve always found you perfectly readable. I think the reading age of a Guardian reader is fine. I’m quite worried by the average reading age of the UK.
Yes, I agree! After I read your comment regarding average reading age, I told my daughter who is ten. Neither of us could get our heads round the fact that the average adult can read less well than her (she can read my posts, just about).
Sounds like you have a daughter who is reading above her age – which is always a good thing. Yes, it’s difficult to believe the average reading age, but I suspect everyone on WordPress is above average!
Nature of the beast…. if you like reading, which surely you must do if you like blogging, then it stands to reason most posts would be within your reading range.
I enjoyed reading about your boring day! 😂
Thank you. It’s often the way that one person’s boring day is interesting to others. This is fortunate. 🙂
I do regret the demise of the perfectly crafted long sentence. I do hope this post doesn’t bore you: https://derrickjknight.com/2012/11/07/prolixity-or-conciseness/
Very interesting post, as usual. Love the wellies1
Thanks a lot, Quercus