Copywriters, content marketers and online business owners know the power of words. However, truly getting to grips with and evaluating readability score is something we often all overlook.
We are often so preoccupied with keywords, character limits and visuals we forget to evaluate our copy. We forget to identify if our messaging and copy is readable and relevant to our audience.
Evaluating content’s readability is key to ensuring customer engagement.
Readability Definition
What is a readability score? For us, ‘readability is a measure of how easily a reader understands a text.’ There are plenty more definitions out there but this is what we mean when we say readability.
Now I am going to outline how to measure and improve readability score.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests
Flesch-Kincaid readability tests are two of the most popular ways to evaluate the reading complexity of a text. They score the readability of content.
The two tests are:
Readability expert Rudolf Flesch created both tests. J. Peter Kincaid developed the latter test further for the US Navy. Both tests use the same basic measures: word length and sentence length. Although they both give the measures different weighting.
Flesch-Reading Ease
The Flesch-reading ease test scores content out of 100 based on its readability. A 12 year old could easily understand a score of 60 or above. University graduates best understand a score of 30 or below.
This is how the test calculates the formula:
