How to Show Reading Level in Word

Microsoft Word and Outlook have long featured the ability to view "readability" statistics for what you're writing, then you know how elementary or circuitous you're writing is. This can assistance ensure your writing is readable enough for your intended audition.

In older versions of Word, the feature was only a click away on your status bar. In versions starting with 2013, you accept to enable the characteristic get-go, and and then access information technology by running a spell and grammar check.

Checking spelling and grammar in Word and Outlook happen in the Proofing Console, and offer a adequately solid style of proofing documents. There are some better grammar-checking add-ins for Part out at that place, but even if you have those enabled, y'all'll still need to enable the built-in grammar checking to be able to use the readability statistics. Whether that's worth it is really up to yous. And if y'all don't mind having grammar checking active, just simply adopt non to be distracted by the squiggly underlines while yous work, you can always turn off spelling and grammer checking while you type.

RELATED: How to Use the Proofing Panel in Word

How to Enable Readability Statistics

To access readability statistics in Word, you'll showtime demand to turn the feature on. In Word, click the File tab so click Options. In the Options window, select the Proofing tab. Enable both the "Cheque grammar with spelling" and "Bear witness readability statistics" check boxes. Click OK when you're finished.

The process is similar in Outlook. Click the File tab and so click Options. In the Options window, select the Mail tab and and then click the "Spelling and Autocorrect" push.

In the Editor Options window, select the Proofing tab. Enable both the "Cheque grammar with spelling" and "Show readability statistics" check boxes and then click OK.

Note that in both Give-and-take and Outlook, y'all tin can deselect the options for checking spelling and grammar errors as y'all type if you lot find that distracting.

How to View Readability Statistics

Now that you've enabled reading statistics, checking the readability score of a document or a selection of text is simple. All you lot have to do is run a spell and grammar check. You can select specific text to check, or brand certain nothing is selected to check the whole document. Initiate a spelling and grammar check by hitting F7 or by clicking the Proofing button in the condition bar at the bottom of the window.

Run through the spell and grammer check and, when you're washed, the Readability Statistics window volition pop up.

The window shows y'all some bones statistics similar discussion and grapheme counts, along with some averages similar sentences per paragraph. In the Readability section, you'll meet 2 scores: Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Both scores are based on formulas that account for average sentence length (ASL) and average syllables per word (ASW).

• Flesch Reading Ease. This score rates the readability of your text on a 100-point scale, with higher scores being easier to read. Scores from 0-lx are typically regarded as higher or higher graduate level and fairly hard to read. Scores from 60-80 are regarded as reasonably easy to read and written in patently English. Well-nigh professional person documents autumn into this range. Higher scores than 80 are regarded as easy to read for kids.
• Flesch-Kincaid Course Level. This scores rates the readability of text based on U.South. school form levels. A score of 4.0, for example, means writing that tin can exist understood by a fourth grader. Most professional documents fall somewhere in the range of vii.0-11.0.

And if you like knowing the math behind things, the formula used for determining the Flesch Reading Ease score is:

206.835 – (1.015 ten ASL) – (84.6 x ASW)

The formula used in determining the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is:

(.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – xv.59

And that's it! It's a simple feature to enable and apply and, while you lot may not want to base of operations everything you write on readability scores, they can still be a handy tool for making sure y'all're hitting the right audience with your writing.

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