Website Reading Level: How to Check and Simplify Copy

A reading level score measures two things: how long your sentences are and how many syllables your words carry. Nothing else goes into the math. Microsoft prints the Flesch-Kincaid grade formula on its help page for readability and level statistics, and it works like this:

• Divide the number of words by the number of sentences, then multiply that average by 0.39.
• Divide the number of syllables by the number of words, then multiply that average by 11.8.
• Add the two results together and subtract 15.59.

The answer lines up with United States school grades, so a 7 means a seventh grader should manage it. Microsoft's page suggests that most documents aim for a grade of about 7 to 8.

Because the formula only sees length, splitting sentences is almost always the quickest way to bring a score down.

The grade measures how dense the words are, and that leaves a lot out. Here's where it can mislead you.

• Short jargon scores as easy. “We flash the valley and replace the drip edge” is made of short words, and plenty of homeowners still won't know what it means.
• Long familiar words score as hard. Insurance, estimate, Indianapolis and Noblesville are words your buyers know, and every one of them pushes the grade up. The W3C's reading level success criterion judges text after proper names and titles are removed, which is a fair adjustment to make in your head, too.
• Punctuation changes the count. Checkers find sentences by looking for periods, question marks and exclamation points. A bulleted list with no periods can get counted as one very long sentence, so a page that's easy to scan may score harder than it reads.
• Tools disagree with each other. Syllables are counted with rules of thumb, and every checker uses slightly different ones. Compare a page against its own earlier score in the same tool, because two tools can give the same page two different grades.
• It ignores order and meaning. A page can score a 6 and still hide the price at the bottom or never say how to book.

Service page buyers skim because they show up with one or two questions and they're hunting for the answers. Someone on a gutter repair page wants to know if you handle their kind of job, whether you come to their town and how soon someone can get out there.

This habit has been studied for a long time. In a 1997 study, Nielsen Norman Group found that 79 percent of its test users always scanned any new page they came across, and only 16 percent read word by word. It's an old study, so hold the exact figures loosely.

Long sentences hurt skimmers the most. When the price range sits in the middle of a 40 word sentence about your company's history, the eye slides right past it. Short sentences put each fact where a skimmer can catch it. Site Scan's own note on this check puts it simply: people skim on their phones, and long sentences make them give up. If you're still deciding which facts belong on a service page at all, what a service page should explain about scope and pricing covers that part.

Aim for grade 9 or lower on a service page, and closer to 7 or 8 if you can get there without dropping facts. Grade 9 is the line Site Scan uses for full credit. It sits close to the W3C's accessibility bar, which is set at the lower secondary education level, a stage that ends nine years after a child starts primary school. That criterion is at WCAG's strictest level, AAA, and it still makes a sensible target for a business site.

Some pages will score higher for good reasons. A page written for facility managers can run a grade or two above a page for homeowners. Use the number as a flag that tells you where to look, and set the target by who actually reads the page.

Site Scan reports reading level as a measured fact for each page it reads, which means code counts it straight from the page's text. When you scan your site with Site Scan, it reads up to 10 pages, starting with your home page and spreading the rest evenly across the site. For every page, code pulls out the main text, leaves the navigation, header and footer behind, and runs the Flesch-Kincaid grade formula from earlier.

When reading level is one of a page's biggest problems, the report says so in one plain sentence with the page's grade, rounded to one decimal place, labeled Measured. The CSV export carries every page's grade in a column called reading_grade, so you can sort every scanned page from hardest to easiest. Reading level carries less weight in the score than bigger checks, such as whether Google may index the page.

Site Scan sorts every finding into one of two kinds. Measured findings are among the 24 facts counted by code, such as title length, one H1 and whether your phone number is a tap to call link. AI judgment findings are Jev's answers to 44 typed questions about each page, such as whether it answers a buyer's question or shows proof. Reading level belongs to the first kind, so an unchanged page gets the same grade on every scan. Whether the copy actually answers what a buyer asked belongs to the second kind, and that's where Jev's judgment comes in. If you'd like background on the model itself, what Jev is explains how it answers in fixed types.

The scan is free with no account, with 3 scans a day. It follows each site's robots.txt rules, stops at bot checks and builds the report in your browser as a PDF and a CSV.

Simplify by keeping every fact and cutting the words around it. Dumbing down removes information, and buyers notice when the price or the warranty terms go missing. These changes lower the grade and keep the substance.

1. Split any sentence that holds two ideas. The federal plain language guidelines tell writers to write short sentences that each carry one idea. Look for “and,” “which” or “because” in the middle of a long sentence, since that's usually where it breaks cleanly.
2. Swap long words for the ones you'd say on the phone. The same guidelines have a page on using simple words and phrases. Write “use” for “utilize,” “start” for “commence” and “if” for “in the event that.” Keep a trade term when the buyer needs it, and explain it in plain words the first time it shows up.
3. Put the answer first in each section. If a heading asks what a repair costs, the next sentence should give the range or say what sets it. A skimmer who reads one line per section still leaves with the answer. Content formats that clarify answers for buyers goes further into tables, lists and FAQs.
4. Talk to one person. “You'll get a written estimate before we start” is shorter and clearer than a sentence about how customers are provided with estimates. Writing with “you” and “we” also pushes sentences into active voice, which usually cuts words.
5. Use lists for steps and options, and let the score be. A list of what's included in a job is easier to scan than a paragraph, even when a checker counts it as one long sentence.

Here's what that looks like on one sentence from a roofing page. The original reads: “In the event that your roof sustains storm damage, our team will coordinate directly with your insurance company to facilitate the claims process and ensure all necessary documentation is submitted in a timely manner.” The rewrite reads: “If a storm damages your roof, we'll deal with your insurance company for you. We take the photos and send in the paperwork your claim needs, on time.”

Both versions promise the same help. Run through the formula above, the original works out to about grade 19 and the rewrite to about grade 5, and the rewrite names the photos and paperwork where the original only said documentation.

Your home page or your biggest service page is usually the right place to start. Run a free Site Scan, open the CSV, sort by reading_grade and rewrite the page at the top of the list using the steps above. When the new copy is live, scan again and compare that page's grade with its old number.

Reading level covers the words on the page. If you also want a page's HTML checked, the tags and technical setup behind it, the free SEO, AEO and GEO audit is the separate tool for that. Trojan Digital Marketing is an Indianapolis based agency that works with businesses across central Indiana and the United States, and if a rewrite turns into a new site, the web design page is the place to start.