Do I Write Like a Middle-Schooler?

Doppelganger over at 50 Books has a link to a fascinating Readability Test for your blog (or other website.)

The test will calculate reading level, rate the 'readability' of your site, and show you where your site sits compared to other publications.

Results for 300 Dollar Wonder:

Summary....................................................................... Value
Total sentences ................................................................ 1478
Total words ..................................................................... 11023
Average words per Sentence ............................................... 7.46
Words with 1 Syllable ........................................................ 6957
Words with 2 Syllables ...................................................... 2213
Words with 3 Syllables ...................................................... 1171
Words with 4 or more Syllables ............................................ 682
Percentage of word with three or more syllables .................. 16.81%
Average Syllables per Word ................................................ 1.60
Gunning Fog Index (Reading Grade Level #1) ........................ 9.71
Flesch Reading Ease (1 = hard, 100 = Easy) ...................... 64.00
Flesch-Kincaid Grade (Reading Level #1) .............................. 6.18

For what it's worth, 300 Dollar Wonder falls within 'Popular Novels' and falls closer to Newsweek (10) than Readers Digest (8).

I'd like to think that if so much of the front page (it only looks at the front page) wasn't quotes taken out of American Newspapers (not exactly high level reading) the score would be higher.

I'm just glad that the test didn't take misspelled words into account...