The readability of our prose
Oct 4, 2006 · 3 minute readI’ve been doing a little more light weight analytical research, this time on the readability of the content I read in my feed reader, which mainly consists of web design and development blogs and magazines.
A combination of things brough me to this point. An interest in accessibility and readability, being a maths and stats geek and my affair with Python. Yes, I know it’s just stats, and I did just parse the titles and descriptions from feeds once. I’m not claiming anything other than I though it interesting and worth sharing. If I get really carried away I’ll set up a league table.
Who knows; maybe it will encourage some to use less dense prose? As long as people dont start competing for the highest scores!
For more information on the background to some of these algorithms and what they mean have a read of Jez’s excellent write up
| Site | Flesch Kincaid | Gunning Fog |
|---|---|---|
| Anne’s Weblog | 4.54 | 2.58 |
| Jesse James Garrett’s Hidden Agenda | 5.38 | 2.8 |
| Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report | 5.5 | 3.08 |
| mezzoblue dailies | 5.93 | 3.85 |
| Subtraction | 6.14 | 4.43 |
| ZachInglis.com | 5.33 | 5.5 |
| HTML Dog Blog | 7.46 | 4.65 |
| Tom Hume | 7.73 | 4.41 |
| ShaunInman.com | 7.61 | 4.91 |
| molly.com | 6.73 | 5.84 |
| Test | 8.24 | 4.66 |
| Adactio | 7.47 | 5.92 |
| Authentic Boredom | 8.26 | 5.54 |
| xlab weblog | 7.57 | 6.41 |
| Jaredigital – article | 7.86 | 6.29 |
| The Intranet Blog | 7.58 | 6.58 |
| Loud Thinking | 8.14 | 6.09 |
| DOM Scripting Blog | 8.12 | 6.18 |
| Jeffrey Veen | 8.42 | 6.07 |
| @media 2006 | 9.17 | 5.35 |
| katemonkey.co.uk | 7.76 | 6.78 |
| CollyLogic | 8.17 | 6.42 |
| Carson Systems News | 8.59 | 6.07 |
| Dave Shea’s mezzoblue | 7.99 | 6.8 |
| dotjay.co.uk – blog | 8.23 | 6.64 |
| UX Magazine | 8.61 | 6.33 |
| QuirksBlog | 8 | 7.11 |
| Joel on Software | 8.24 | 7.07 |
| Signal vs. Noise | 8.61 | 6.75 |
| 24 ways | 9.39 | 6.23 |
| Clearleft Events | 8.9 | 6.74 |
| box of chocolates | 8.69 | 7.05 |
| Stopdesign | 9.09 | 6.74 |
| Steven Woods – Swoo.co.uk | 8.99 | 7.16 |
| /\\ndy’s Blog | 9.19 | 6.96 |
| Thoughts From Eric | 9.32 | 6.91 |
| Vitamin | 9.26 | 6.99 |
| Boxes and Arrows | 10.0 | 6.50 |
| BitWorking Joe Gregorio | 9.78 | 6.76 |
| Andy Budd::Blogography | 9.27 | 7.32 |
| Mike Davidson | 9.21 | 7.51 |
| cackhanded | 9.32 | 7.4 |
| Bruce Lawson’s personal site | 9.90 | 7.22 |
| Le «blog personnel» de Joe Clark | 9.89 | 7.3 |
| morethanseven.net | 9.38 | 7.86 |
| hicksdesign – journal | 9.58 | 7.79 |
| as days pass by | 9.49 | 8.15 |
| Logoblog: Web Standards, Accessibility & Usability | 9.19 | 8.62 |
| Simon Willison’s Weblog | 10.6 | 7.66 |
| John Battelle’s Searchblog | 10.6 | 7.69 |
| Veerle’s blog: full articles | 9.78 | 8.68 |
| Garrett Dimon | 10.4 | 8.16 |
| The Web Standards Project | 10.9 | 7.77 |
| plasticbag.org | 10.7 | 8.04 |
| :Ben Metcalfe Blog | 10.3 | 8.47 |
| 456 Berea Street | 11 | 8.30 |
| Clagnut | 10.8 | 8.6 |
| KuraFire Network – Log | 10.5 | 8.98 |
| The Web’s Bollocks | 11 | 8.56 |
| developer.\* – The Independent Magazine for Software Professionals | 11.8 | 8.03 |
| Bare Naked App | 10.8 | 9.38 |
| danwebb.net – Home | 11 | 9.23 |
| Ben Ward | 10.8 | 9.54 |
| Content with Style – Articles | 10.7 | 9.92 |
| KuraFire Network – Articles | 11.8 | 8.92 |
| all in the head | 11.4 | 9.45 |
| Wait till I come! | 13 | 7.93 |
| And all that Malarkey | 11.5 | 9.76 |
| Digital Web: Latest Articles | 12.7 | 8.59 |
| bloggED | 11.1 | 10.2 |
| Web Standards with Imagination | 11.4 | 10.2 |
| Official Google Blog | 11.8 | 10 |
| Particletree | 12.2 | 9.71 |
| Niall Kennedy’s Weblog | 12.8 | 9.29 |
| Brothercake | 13.9 | 9.7 |
| Blog Standard Stuff | 12.1 | 11.6 |
| ThePickards | 13.3 | 11.4 |
| dean.edwards.name/weblog/ | 15 | 10.7 |
| SitePoint Blogs | 14.9 | 11.5 |
| Space & Beyond | 14.2 | 12.9 |
| The Watchmaker Project – journal | 14.8 | 12.3 |
| Muffin Research Labs | 16.6 | 14.9 |
| Point studios | 20.5 | 19.2 |
| Juicy Studio | 28.3 | 18.8 |
A few interesting things to note. I’m sure some parsing error or such has Juicy Studio scoring so highly!
I’ll hopefully get round to releasing the scripts once I finish a couple of other things off.