Let’s get it on
Posted by Ray @ 10:02 pmNeil Gaiman has made available online 3/4ths of the first chapter of his new novel, Anansi Boys. I haven’t read it yet, because as I was reading his blog entry on the matter, something else caught my eye: the Flesch-Kincaid readability test!
Apparently it’s a mathematical test of how readable your essay/book/chunk-of-text is. According to the Wikipedia entry, the US government itself uses it as a standard (not sure how good an endorsement that is, but there you go). But getting to the point: I saw an online gizmo you could use to get your own Flesch-Kincaid score.
‘Heh heh heh~’, I thought. ‘It’s time to see just how good our local blogders are!’
So in total disregard of the looming exam schedule, I got to work copy-pasting random blogder’s URLs into The Machine. The scores are based on two factors: how easy it is to read, and how it stacks up to major publications. The list of publications goes something like this:
TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain (simple)
Reader’s Digest
Most popular novels
Time, Newsweek
Wall Street Journal
The Times, The Guardian
Academic papers
The government is covering something up (obfuscated)
Without further ado, here are the results!
Xiaxue - http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/
Ease of reading: 84.46
Standard of writing: TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
I’m sure the gizmo isn’t saying that Xiaxue writes like the Bible. If she did, #2 on the Ten Commandments would read “Thou Shalt Not Proselytize”, and Christianity would have died out millenia ago.
mr brown - http://www.mrbrown.com/
Ease of reading: 79.28
Standard of writing: Reader’s Digest
Wah, mr brown can compare to Reader’s Digest! Not bad, not bad. Or maybe the singlish just messed with the gizmo - I don’t know. But there are more heavyweight contenders to come!
Mr Miyagi - http://myveryownglob.blogspot.com/
Ease of reading: 74.95
Standard of writing: Most popular novels
Out of nowhere, Mr Miyagi comes in and thrashes mr brown! He writes like a pop-novelist. Really. Don’t look at me like that, computer say one!
Wannabe Lawyer - http://shianux.jiyuuu.org/
Ease of reading: 60.85 (!)
Standard of writing: TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain.
Well, here it is at last. Conclusive proof that us lawyers are full of shit. Just look at that low readability score, coupled with that dumbed-down standard of writing! All those difficult words and we still only convey as much critical thought as a TV guide. And we’ll still make more money than you, suckers!
Popaghandi - http://popagandhi.com/
Ease of reading: 71.70
Standard of writing: Most Popular Novels
What’s this? A valiant effort to dislodge Mr Miyagi from the current top spot?! Will she succeed? But no - Mr Miyagi’s blog is easier to read! Alas, ’tis a pity. Is there no one to stop his reign of superiority?
Daryl Sng - http://www.dsng.net/
Ease of reading: Ridiculously difficult
Standard of writing: The government is covering something up
Yes! One man bravely steps forth… but wait. This guy’s blog had such short snippets & such short quotes that getting an accurate gauge was next to impossible. When I found his “Robots” review I thought, AHA, some content to gauge! But his web page was so deviously written that it broke the gizmo:
His “Closer” review also nuked the gizmo.
I can only conclude that his blog contains evil subliminal messages. Don’t go to it! Wait later you all get mind-controlled or something.
Mayhemics - http://www.geocities.com/mayhemics/home.htm
Ease of reading: 59.19 (!)
Standard of writing: Wall Street Journal (!)
On a whim, and suspicious of the accuracy of the broken gizmo, I loaded a passage that I knew to be enigmatic. Now the author (whom we shall call D) will adamantly insist that this is not a blog, and it isn’t - I just wanted to mess with the gizmo. The result? The passage is hard to read, but talks at the mental level of the Wall Street Journal - which is probably pretty accurate. Despite being the highest, knowing D, he’s likely to take that as an insult.
So there you have it! Our winners are:
1st Place: Mr Miyagi
Most Readable Blog: Xiaxue
Most Scary Blog: Daryl Sng
What about Squarebrain? Well… see, that’s kind of embarrassing. We scored pretty well on the readability, but couldn’t even garner enough points to be compared to a TV guide. That would put us… um. In last place. Thank god we’re not actually a blog!
(Test notes: blogs that quote extensively would not accurately reflect the skill of the blogder. In such cases I tried to choose a particular wordy post of the blogger’s own words to rank. But then I realized that those posts will have tons of comments from other people, too. At which point I gave up on all appearances of being fair. So don’t use these results for anything important!)
13 Comments »
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://www.squarebrain.net/2005-03/lets-get-it-on/trackback/
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
LOL… my score actually improved by 1 since you posted… haha…
You know how when you write, sometimes you adopt a certain ‘voice’ which you wouldn’t normally use in normal ’speech’? Its subconscious for me I think… using literary modes of speech can be very effective in getting a point across… either that or people think you siao… hahaha
By the way, I found SquareBrain through Adrian Loo. Love your comics, super funny… which guy hasn’t encountered the scenarios you draw? =D
Comment by Han — Friday, March 25 2005 @ 11:42 pm
Yeah. I actually enjoy writing that sounds like the author is speaking to you. I have to edit like mad just to get that kind of tone!
Glad you enjoy the comic. We’re still trying our best to find our voice - hopefully it’ll settle down soon.
Comment by Ray — Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 11:11 am
It’s too late - having read my blog, you are clearly now under my control.
More seriously, I think it’s the Amazon ad within my blog, which uses IFrame.
Comment by Daryl — Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 6:40 pm
Must… go… http://www.dsng.net/…
Mmmm, brains.
Just out of curiosity, how come you have ads in sub-pages, but not the main page? *wonders if he should be posting this on dsng.net*
Comment by Ray — Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 8:07 pm
I do have ads on the main page… Google ads. My arts page has the Amazon ads.
Comment by Daryl — Sunday, March 27 2005 @ 12:08 am
I think you might wanna give LMD a whirl.
Comment by Mr Miyagi — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 3:33 am
Dam the barrage
The folks at SquareBrain.net have given several blogs a whirl on the machine, and have given them some sort of ranking. I dunno how those rankings work…
Trackback by My Very Own Glob {Curiosa Felicitas} — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 4:30 am
My blog clearly shows a big deficiency in my ang moh before attaining academic nirvana. :p
Comment by Acidflask — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 7:10 am
Shites, I never knew of Drinkalot…! *frantic bookmarking*
Comment by Ray — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 12:34 pm
congrats ys! you’ve been miyagi-ed! one step closer to NetFame…. hurhurhurrrr
Comment by vic — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 1:41 pm
Incidentally, you can get the same stats in Word. Just make sure “Readability Statistics” is ticked under Tools-Options-Spelling&Grammar. It’ll give you your Fleisch-Kincaid score for your document after you do a spell check.
Comment by Daryl — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 2:32 pm
Cool. I knew there was a way for word to do it, I just didn’t know where, exactly.
Going to use it for assignments and stuff, just for kicks.
Comment by Ray — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 2:52 pm
suddenly im tossed into the ray fray. interesting conclusions nonetheless heh.
Comment by dogbert — Monday, March 28 2005 @ 10:15 pm