The Flesch Reading Ease Level: highest possible score of readability - 100.
: a score of 1 is the best and a rating of 12 denotes the toughest.
The Flesch Reading Ease Level: highest possible score of readability - 100.
: a score of 1 is the best and a rating of 12 denotes the toughest.
(Pair 1)
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer: "The Circular Ruins"
No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. The truth is that the obscure man kissed the mud, came up the bank without pushing aside (probably without feeling) the brambles which dilacerated his flesh, and dragged himself, nauseous and bloodstained, to the circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which once was the colour of fire and now was that of ashes. This circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men.
Computer's Verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 33.8
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12
Enid Blyton, Famous children's writer: "Go Away Black Cat"
The black cat was a great nuisance in the nursery. He wasn't very large and he didn't make any noise - but he would keep getting out the farmyard animals playing with them!
He sent them sliding all round the floor with his paw, and then pounced after them. The animals were made of wood, so he couldn't really hurt them, but they did not like being slid all over the place like that.
"Go away, black cat!" said the pink pig from the farmyard.
"Go away, black cat!" mooed the cow, who was a little bit afraid of having her long tail broken.
"Oh, go away, black cat!" scolded the sheep, who was very tired of being smacked all over the room, just to please the cat.
The black cat said nothing. He didn't even miaow. He only came in because he loved to play with the little toys, and send them hopping about the room. It was fun to hear them shouting at him too, and not take any notice.
Computer's Verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 87.6
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 4.8
(Pair 2)
Salman Rushdie
"The Satanic Verses"
Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. 'Ohe, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch'. At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. 'Hey, Spoono,' Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, 'Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. Dharrraaammm! Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar...
Computer's Verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 55.1
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 9
Kindergarten: The PC Tongue
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner: "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
Nursery Rhymes:
Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the sky so high
Like a diamond in the sky.
Computer Verdict
Flesch Reading ease: 94.6
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 2.3
(Pair 3)
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquiades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creek from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquiades' magical irons.
Computer's Verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 49.1
Flesch Kincaid Grade level: 12
An Advertisement Copy
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Computer's verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 57.2
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 7.9
The Last Example
The prose which was totally rejected by the computer for being off-scale: James Joyce's "Ulysses", voted in many surveys as the best novel of the 20th century.
Yes, because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms Hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing His Highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort don on bathing suits and low necks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope I'll never be like her a wonder...
Computer's verdict
Flesch Reading Ease: 0
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 0