Terry of I See Invisible People and Sherry Chandler both ran their blogs through this Blog Readability Test, so of course I had to try it too. While Terry and Sherry both score as plainspoken women, (grammar school and high school, respectively) I got this "Genius" classification, which means I'm the kind of gal who calls a spade a geotome.
The simplest assessments of reading level just calculate your average number of letters per word--the higher the number of letters per word, the higher the reading level. I think this is what's going on here. My recent infatuation with the "Bond Antepenultimate Knitting Machine" is responsible for a lot of letters. I know I should knock it off, it wasn't that funny the first time, but ever since I learned the word "antepenultimate" in my ninth grade Latin class, I've been waiting to use it, and I don't expect I'll have another chance.
I also ran my Web site's index page, My Spice Ridge Home, through the program, and it gave a rating of "College: Post-Grad." My index page is free of "antepenultimates" and has very little text--it's mostly lists of links, but nearly every line contains "Pocahontas County," a letter-intensive phrase.
After working with kids and with adult basic education learners, I've become really interested in reading levels and accessibility on Web pages. I happened to have these "Readability" links tucked away, just waiting for an excuse to be posted.
I do not recall the grade level of first encounter, but I've liked penultimate for a long time. I was excited to see the knitting macnine described as antepenultimate in the blog November 1, 2007.
ReplyDeleteNow, I have a new word, having spent twenty minutes using ixquick.com and Google as geotomys.
I'm a word geek, but I must confess I've never encountered "antepenultimate". What a specialized and obscure word!
ReplyDeleteI tried the readability link but it wasn't able to read my blog, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteare you familiar with the 'worthles word for the day" site? a lovely collection of obsure, limited use words..
ReplyDelete(and of course there is AWAD (a word a day server.. a new word mailed to you (and never any spam, and almost no ads (very small text only!)
Awad can be found easily by googling.. here is link to wwftd
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd/
Larry, there are much better reading level assessment calculators out there--search for "reading level" because "readability" mostly turns up evaluations of different fonts.
ReplyDeleteA geotome comes in handy, doesn't it? I had to stop visiting the word-play web sites. I was starting to annoy my friends and family. You see what happened with "antepenultimate..."