What readability score your writing should hit

Most writing online is harder to read than it needs to be, and there is a number that tells you exactly how bad it is.

Readability is scored from 0 to 100. Higher means easier to read. The scale most tools use is Flesch Reading Ease, and it is worth knowing where you actually land.

What the ranges mean:

90 and above reads at roughly a fifth grade level. 60 to 70 is the sweet spot for web content and sits around an eighth to ninth grade reading level, which is what the average adult reads comfortably. Below 30 reads like an academic paper and most people will not finish it.

For online copy, blog posts, landing pages and client articles, aim for 60 or higher. Many editors push for 70.

There is a second number called Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, which converts the same measurement into school grades. As a rule of thumb, keep it at grade 8 or lower.

Here is the part nobody explains properly. The score only measures two things: how long your sentences are, and how long your words are. That is the entire formula. So there are exactly two ways to improve it.

Cut sentence length. Split anything over about 25 words into two.

Cut word length. Swap the long word for the short one every time both work. Utilize becomes use. Approximately becomes about. Demonstrate becomes show.

AI writing tends to score badly here for a specific reason: it produces long sentences at a very consistent length, one after another, with formal vocabulary throughout. Running a readability check on an AI draft is usually eye opening.

You can check any text for free. It takes a paste and a click.

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