Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is a readability metric used to determine how difficult a text is to understand based on the length of words and sentences in the text. The values vary from 0 to 18 where 18 represents the most difficult text. Here's how the grade level should be interpreted:
| Value | School level | Student age range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-1 | Pre-kindergarten - 1st grade | 3-7 | Basic level for those who just learn to read books. |
| 1-5 | 1st grade - 5th grade | 7-11 | Very easy to read. |
| 5-11 | 5th grade - 11th grade | 11-17 | Average level. Good for the majority of marketing materials. Grade level of 8 (13- to 15 year-old-students) is recommended for English content to be successfully read by 80% of readers in the USA. The level for marketing materials may vary from grade level of 6 to 15 where lower levels are OK for short blog posts or emails and higher levels can be used for ebooks. |
| 11-18 | 11th grade - 18th grade | 17 and above | The text is for skilled readers. For example, an academic paper. |
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Note |
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Originally, all the metrics were created for the English language and the education system of the United States. In ClickHelp, the metrics are available for all languages. Because of this, school levels and age ranges may be off for other languages. But the relative values will still be correct, so you can compare the readability of two different topics that use the same language. For example, if your topic got 100 according to Flesch Reading Ease, and another topic got 80, it means that the text of the second topic is more difficult to read, than the text of the first one. If the value of a readability metric is zero for your topic, check the selected language for your project to make sure it matches the language of the actual text. Also, make sure the punctuation is correct and all sentences end with a dot. |
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