Reading Grade Level of Children’s Books, Part II

Part I of this thread began a discussion of the classification and age range of a children’s book. It suggested that the reading grade level might be of more value, mentioning Microsoft Word’s built-in function for determining a document’s readability.


The function produces something called the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score. The average length of sentences (number of words in a sentence divided by the number of sentences) and the average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of sentences), determines the score.


The score represents a reading grade level, i.e. a score of 6.0 indicates that a sixth grade student in the U.S. should be able to read the document. This post has a reading grade level score of is 11.6.


Access the function by clicking on Help in your version of Word, typing the word readability in the search field, and following the instructions. Those with Word 2007 need to configure the function and click on the Review tab. Next, click on the Spelling & Grammar icon to see a document’s score.


Part III of this thread looks at determining the reading grade level of a manuscript that is not a Microsoft Word document.