I put ‘Soki’s Address’ through the Flesch-Kincaid
readability tests last night. Noted below.
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Flesch–Kincaid readability tests
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
The
Flesch–Kincaid readability tests are readability tests designed to
indicate how difficult a reading passage in English is to understand. There are
two tests, the Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level.
Although they use the same core measures (word length and sentence length),
they have different weighting factors.
The
results of the two tests correlate approximately inversely: a text with a
comparatively high score on the Reading Ease test should have a lower score on
the Grade-Level test. Rudolf Flesch devised the Reading Ease evaluation; somewhat
later, he and J. Peter Kincaid developed the Grade Level evaluation for the
United States Navy.
History
"The Flesch–Kincaid" (F–K)
reading grade level was developed under contract to the U.S. Navy in 1975 by J.
Peter Kincaid and his team. Related U.S. Navy research directed by Kincaid
delved into high-tech education (for example, the electronic authoring and
delivery of technical information), usefulness of the Flesch–Kincaid readability
formula, computer aids for editing tests, illustrated formats to teach
procedures, and the Computer Readability Editing System (CRES).
The F–K formula was first used by the
Army for assessing the difficulty of technical manuals in 1978 and soon after
became the Department of Defense military standard. Pennsylvania was the first
U.S. state to require that automobile insurance policies be written at no
higher than a ninth-grade level (14–15 years of age) of reading difficulty, as
measured by the F–K formula. This is now a common requirement in many other
states and for other legal documents such as insurance policies.
Flesch
reading ease
Scores can be interpreted as shown in
the table below.
** **
Score School
Level Notes
90.-100. 5th Grade Very
easily understood by 11 yr. old
80.-90. 6th
Grade Easy. Conversational
English
70.-80. 7th
Grade Fairly easy to read
60.-70. 8/9th
Grade PlainEnglish.Understood.by.13/15.yr.olds
50.-60. 10/12th
Grade Fairly difficult to read
30.-50. College Difficult to read
0.-30. College
Grad. Very difficult. Graduated from
college
** **
In the Flesch reading-ease test, higher
scores indicate material that is easier to read; lower numbers mark passages
that are more difficult to Reader’s
Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, an average grade six student's
written assignment (age of 12) has a readability index of 60–70 (and a reading
grade level of six to seven), and the Harvard
Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30s. The highest (easiest)
readability score possible is around 120 (e.g., every sentence consisting of
only two one-syllable words; "The cat sat on the mat." scores 116).
The score does not have a theoretical lower bound. It is possible to make the
score as low as wanted by arbitrarily including words with many syllables. The
sentence "This sentence, taken as a reading passage unto itself, is being
used to prove a point." has a readability of 74.1. The sentence "The
Australian platypus is seemingly a hybrid of a mammal and reptilian
creature." scores 37.5 as it has 24 syllables and 13 words. While Amazon
calculates the text of Moby Dick as
57.9, one particularly long sentence about sharks in chapter 64 has a
readability score of −146.77. One sentence in the beginning of “Swann’s Way” by
Marcel Proust, has a score of −515.1. Furthermore, the chemical name for titin is 189,819 characters long,
scores a −6,128,472, with 72,443 syllables.
The U.S. Department of Defense uses the
reading ease test as the standard test of readability for its documents and
forms.
Florida
requires that life insurance policies have a Flesch reading ease score of 45 or
greater.
Use of this scale is so ubiquitous that
it is bundled with popular word processing programs and services such as KWord,
IBM Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Office Word, Word Perfect and WordPro.
Polysyllabic words affect this score
significantly more than they do the grade level score.
Flesch–Kincaid
grade level
These readability tests are used
extensively in the field of education. The "Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level
Formula" instead presents a score as a U.S. grade level making it easier
for teachers, parents, librarians, and others to judge the readability level of
various books and texts. It can also mean the number of years of education
generally required to understand this text, relevant when the formula results
in a number greater than 10.
The result is a number that corresponds
with a U.S. grade level. The sentence, "The Australian platypus is
seemingly a hybrid of a mammal and reptilian creature" is a 11.3 as it has
24 syllables and 13 words. The different weighting factors for words per
sentence and syllables per word in each scoring system mean that the two
schemes are not directly comparable and cannot be converted. The grade level
formula emphasises sentence length over word length. By creating one-word
strings with hundreds of random characters, grade levels may be attained that
are hundreds of times larger than high school completion in the United States.
Due to the formula's construction, the score does not have an upper bound.
The
lowest grade level score in theory is −3.40, but there are few real passages in
which every sentence consists of a single one-syllable word. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss comes close,
averaging 5.7 words per sentence and 1.02 syllables per word, with a grade
level of −1.3. (Most of the 50 used words are monosyllabic;
"anywhere", which occurs eight times, is the only exception.)
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
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Here
are the results:
**
**
The Flesch–Kincaid
readability tests scores for ‘Soki’s Address’
Counts
Words 1,473
Characters 7,106
Paragraphs 17
Sentences 73
Averages
Sentences
per Paragraph 4.8
Words per
Sentence 19.9
Characters
per Word 4.6
Readability
Flesch Reading
Ease 57
Flesch-Kincade
Grade Level 9.8
Passive
Sentences 12.3 %
**
**
2227 hours 30 November 2016. Thus,
Amorella has a reading ease score of 57 close to Melville’s reading score of 57.9
for Moby Dick at least according to Amazon.
Fifty
to sixty puts ‘Soki’s Address’ in the tenth to twelfth grade reading level and
thus, according to the Flesch Reading Ease test the ‘Address’ is fairly
difficult to read. What did you expect? – Amorella
2239 hours. It is basically a first draft. I
rather like that it is geared for juniors and seniors in high school since they
are among those who I mostly taught from 1966 through 2003.
[Drop
into the 1 December posting. – Amorella]
2245 hours. Life is interesting; such humor, Amorella’s
Soki Address scores the same as my number three pick of (to me) the most influential pieces of world
literature, Moby Dick.
***
Mid-morning. You have a cool windy Thursday morning.
– Amorella
0854 hours. Thor’s-day, tomorrow is Frigga’s-day and the next is Saturn’s-day,
then we begin with the Sun’s-day [Son’s-day for Christians], the Moon’s-day, Tiw’s-day
and Woden’s-day. Most are Old English or Old German, obviously the Roman’s
Saturn fits in well for Saturday night in particular. Just rolled out of memory
and an old lecture note to catch Seniors’ attention. Most high schoolers were
oblivious to matters of such high interest.
Your
humor plus the typical high school senior attitude appears to have been a good
mix. – Amorella
0916 hours. That’s probably it, Amorella,
this mix is no doubt the reason for both their survival and my survival in the
same classroom at the same time. Simple answer with much truth to it.
Mid-afternoon. You
and Carol saw the film Arrival earlier then had lunch at Penn Station. –
Amorella
1523 hours. Carol gave it 3 out of 4 and I
gave it a 4 out of 4. I should have caught the ending earlier. The major clue I
missed was that they learned the alien language construct has no verb or verb
substitutes. Two works come to mind, one immediately as we left the screen room
– Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut) and the second (less than a minute ago)
– Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein). It is my opinion that the original
author of the short story Arrival is based on had read both books. Below
are two excerpts from Wikipedia.
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**
Arrival is a 2016 American
science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Heisserer,
based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. It stars Amy
Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker.
Arrival had its world
premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2016, and was released in
the United States on November 11, 2016, in iMAX by Paramount Pictures. Reviews
praised the film for its story and atmosphere, and Adams for her performance.
It has grossed $97 million worldwide.
Critical
response
Arrival received critical
acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93%, based on
258 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's critical consensus
reads, "Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking
person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion
and a terrific performance from Amy Adams." At Metacritic, which
assigns a weighted average to reviews, the film has a score of 81 out of 100,
based on 52 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled
by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F
scale.
Brian Tallerico,
from RogerEbert.com, gave the film 3 out of 4: "It's a movie designed to
simultaneously challenge viewers, move them and get them talking. For the most
part, it succeeds." The Atlantic writer Christopher Orr
said that, "Arrival, the remarkable new film by Denis Villeneuve,
begins aptly enough with an arrival—though perhaps not the kind you would
expect." IGN reviewer Chris Tilly gave the film an 8.5 out of 10 'Great'
score, saying "Arrival is a language lesson masquerading as a blockbuster,
though much more entertaining than that sounds. The film features shades of Interstellar, Contact and Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, but never feels derivative. Rather it’s smart,
sophisticated sci-fi that asks BIG questions, and does a pretty good job of
answering them.”
British
film critic Robbie Collin gave it five out of five, calling it
"introspective, philosophical and existentially inclined – yet it unfolds
in an unwavering tenor of chest-tightening excitement. And there is a mid-film
revelation – less a sudden twist than sleek unwinding of everything you think
you know – that feels, when it hits you, like your seat is tipping back."
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
**
**
1557 hours. I personally disagree with
the references to Interstellar and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and for what it’s worth, I most closely agree with Collin.
How would anyone make a film of Soki’s
Choice? – Amorella
1614 hours. I cannot imagine because the
words do not lend themselves to visuals – these are concept stories not driven
by plot or even that much character. Once I asked you or you mentioned which
actors/actresses would play some of the Greek gods/goddesses but that was in
the unfinished book four and it was more for my own curiosity and visualization
not for the actual book. To answer your question – no one would make a film of
any of my works, besides . . .
Besides
what? – Amorella
1623 hours. No one would make a film. You said “no films;
words only” or something akin to that, which was and is fine with me. I don’t
want anything, Amorella. You know that. Writing is something I do, ‘mostly’ for
the basic pleasure of dancing my fingers across the keyboard and watching words
come up from seemingly nowhere. – rho
I
suggest that partly be struck and mostly moved into
its place. – Amorella
Post. - Amorella
You were interrupted
by another chore – to the post office before they close; you arrived with four
minutes to spare. – Amorella
1711 hours. I was thinking about Soki’s
story, as Soki is doing the writing perhaps, as a help, I ought to read up more
on developing plot and character. I am really not much into dramatic plot. I
don’t even know if there is a concept storyline but that’s what the Merlyn
books and Stuck are, concepts looking for more plot action anyway;
that’s what Uncle Ernie used to say. He appeared to care about the characters
but he wanted something more to kick into the story by its conclusion. He
wanted to know what happens to the marsupial humanoids. Personally, I don’t
know only that I thought they would become corrupted and created greater
divisions/diversity in their three-worlds’ culture. Maybe you are a storyteller
Soki, but I am only good at setting up the concepts, at least I think I am
pretty good at it. (1724)
You
have had enough real drama in your life to use, boy, if you were so inclined,
but you are not. – Amorella
1737 hours. The dramatic stage is small-focused
and I am broadly minded. I care more about the human species as a whole than I
do the individuals occupying the present sequence of events in the story or
otherwise. At least that is how I feel.
Why
is that orndorff? – Amorella
1741 hours. I don’t know.
Post.
- Amorella
You
helped Carol bring up the Christmas tree. She wants it up tomorrow. It had not
occurred to you to put it up at all. – Amorella
1808 hours. Carol thinks it will be nice for
the boys as they will be spending the night Saturday. Never crossed my mind.
She is a much better person than I am. Christmas is weeks away; I would have
probably thought about it in a couple weeks and asked if she wanted the tree
up. At least it is a small tree. Getting it and the other holiday paraphernalia
up the stairs was half the work. In a month it will all be back in the
basement. I’m glad she thought about the boys. It just wasn’t on my mind. I don’t
think anything was on my mind to be completely honest about it.
2101 hours. Okay, Amorella, why do I care
more about the species than the individuals within it?
You
are piqued once again. – Amorella
2102 hours. I have a reasonable response I
will keep to myself.
Your mind is in a vegetable garden
looking for a carrot. – Amorella
2108 hours. Looking for a care-o-lot.
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