More on that blog readability issue – part 2
As promised in my previous post, here is my analysis on the blogs whose reading level I’ve verified:
- Contrarily to my beliefs, being a non-native English speaker isn’t necessarily a disadvantage. Simonne is Romanian and her blog got a “High School” level; Lars-Christian’s blog was rated as “Genius” and the author is Norwegian. On the other hand, Jenna Glatzer is a professional American writer but her blog’s reading level is “Elementary School.”
- Speaking of writers, I expected blogs aimed at this target-audience to get the highest scores, because both professional authors and wannabes use to be careful of what and how they write. However, C. Hope Clark’s blog was the only one in this niche to reach the “College (Undergrad)” level.
- There was a group blog (Wrimo Buddies) among the writer-oriented ones, and its “High School” score made me wonder whether the amount of writers might affect a blog’s readability or not. Well, among those featuring more than one author, the level appears to vary between “Junior High School” and “High School” (Go Media Zine is the only exception). Not so bad, huh?
- Sadly, I’ve never been to college. However, I don’t find any difficulties in reading the blogs rated “College” (not even the “Postgrad” ones).
- As you all can easily tell, I’m not a genius. Far from it. Yet, I can fully enjoy all of the blogs that reached the “Genius” reading level. No, I’m not saying this to sound smarter. I can really read and understand their articles. Now will you please stop laughing at me? ¬¬
- Can the posts’ length influence a blog’s reading level? More or less. Apparently the blogs featuring shorter articles (see Internet Marketing Sucks!, for instance) tend to be rated “Elementary School.” But having longer articles won’t necessarily help you surpass the “Junior High School” score.
- Having your blog hosted for free won’t affect its redability. Not in a negative way, at least. There’s even a blog rated “Genius” among the freely hosted ones. And many of the privately hosted sites got low rates.
- Talking about blog hosting, it’s interesting to notice that blogs hosted under directories — instead of root domains or subdomains — tend to get lower rates. For instance, TheWritersManifesto’s main page scored “Junior High School,” whereas the blog (which is hosted under a “/blog” directory) was rated “Elementary School.”
How reliable is this analysis?
Not as much as I’d like it to be. Keep in mind that it was based on 39 blogs only. How many blogs are there on the whole Internet?
Please also note that each blog’s readability has been evaluated by an online tool whose criteria is still unknown. It’s safe to assume that blogs displaying several images in their posts are prone to get lower rates, because pictures can’t be read. Other than this, I have no idea of what factors can actually influence the results.
Maybe the test’s creators are still working to improve the tool. The first time I tried to evaluate Steven Snell’s blog, I got a message telling me it wasn’t possible to read it. I made a second attempt a few days later and got the same message. This is why I listed Vandelay Website Design’s main page instead of its blog’s URL. But today I tried once again and I finally got a result: “Junior High School.” By the way, this is lower than the homepage’s reading level, and seems to reinforce what I wrote about the (sub)domains vs. directories issue.
Is it all meant to belittle any blogs?
Of course not!
I have the feeling that some people weren’t exactly happy to find out that their blogs got low rates in the test. However, I don’t think they should take offence in it. Much on the contrary: they should be glad. As many commentators have stated, a lower reading level may actually be an advantage: your articles can be read and fully understood by a broader audience.
The owners of the highest rated blogs shouldn’t worry either: in most cases a reader doesn’t need to be a genius to understand a blog post.
Finally, I must say that many of the test’s results seem to be distorted and/or exaggerated in some way. All in all, this is a cool topic to write — and think — about, but nothing to lose your sleep over.
UPDATE: Liz Strauss has left a very interesting comment about readability here. Make sure to read it.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:05 am
This is interesting, although I cannot figure out how these estimations are done. And you don’t have to feel bad about not going to college: I’ve been there, and instead of learning new words, I even forgot part of the ones I’ve learned in high school
So I can understand that was perfectly intelligible for you. Thank you for the analysis done to my blog.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
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