# Readability Analyser Paste your writing and see how hard it is to read — six standard formulas, a plain-English grade level, and a sentence-by-sentence difficulty map that shows you exactly what to cut. ## What the scores mean Readability formulas estimate how much education a reader needs to understand a passage on the first try. Most do it from three things they can count: how long your sentences are, how long your words are, and how many of your words are "complex." None of them judge whether your writing is *good* — only how demanding it is to decode. Used well, they are a mirror, not a grader. ### The grade-level formulas Five of the six scores here output a U.S. school grade. **Flesch–Kincaid Grade** is the most widely used and combines sentence length with syllables per word. **Gunning Fog** works similarly but leans on the proportion of complex (three-or-more-syllable) words. **SMOG** counts polysyllabic words and is the formula health and medical writers tend to trust, though it is most accurate on passages of thirty sentences or more. **Coleman–Liau** and **ARI** are the odd ones out: they ignore syllables entirely and work from characters per word, which makes them more reliable on text where syllable-counting is shaky. The headline "consensus reading level" at the top is simply the average of these five, which smooths out the quirks of any single formula. ### Flesch Reading Ease The sixth score runs the other way. **Flesch Reading Ease** is a 0–100 scale where *higher means easier*. As a rough guide: 90–100 is very easy (around 5th grade), 60–70 is plain English that most adults read comfortably, 30–50 is difficult and college-level, and below 30 is very hard going. Much popular writing aims for 60 or above; this paragraph sits a little below that. Values can occasionally fall outside 0–100 for unusually simple or dense text. ### The sentence difficulty map Scores tell you *how* hard your writing is; the map shows you *where*. Each sentence is graded on its own and shaded if it runs long or dense — amber for hard, red for very hard. The usual fix is the simplest one: split a long sentence into two. Adverbs ending in "-ly" and likely instances of passive voice are flagged too, since both are easy wins for tighter prose — but they are suggestions, not errors. Plenty of good sentences keep an adverb or use the passive on purpose. ### A note on syllable counting English spelling and pronunciation don't line up neatly, so there is no perfect way to count syllables from text alone. This tool uses a well-established heuristic that is right the large majority of the time but will occasionally miscount an unusual word (it tends to over-count silent vowels and some endings). That means the syllable-based scores — Flesch, Flesch–Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG — are best read as close estimates rather than exact figures. Coleman–Liau and ARI sidestep the issue by counting characters instead. Across a normal-length passage the small errors wash out, and the consensus grade stays dependable. ### Privacy Your text is analysed entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent anywhere — the tool works with no network connection at all. ## Accessibility ### Screen reader support --- *Source: [ocxly.com/readability-analyser.html](https://ocxly.com/readability-analyser.html) — OCXLY, free 100% client-side privacy-first tools. A free readability analyser — Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and ARI, plus a sentence-by-sentence difficulty map. Runs entirely in your browser. From OCXLY Publishing House.*