Reference scale

Famous Text Readability Benchmarks

Readability scores in isolation don't mean much. A grade-12 result feels "hard" until you see that the one-sentence preamble to the US Constitution scores about grade 22 here, and a sample software license, also one long sentence, scores above grade 30. Below: a calibration table of ten public-domain excerpts and seven sample texts written for this page, scored across all six formulas with the same engine that powers the calculator.

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Score your own text against these Open the readability checker →
Text Category Flesch FK Grade Fog SMOG CL ARI Consensus Level

How to read this table

The Consensus column is the mean of all six grade-equivalent scores — Flesch Reading Ease is converted to a grade scale first so it fits the same axis. Lower is easier. The Level band uses the calculator's grade labels:

  • Elementary — grade 5 or below
  • Middle school — grade 6 to 8
  • High school — grade 9 to 12
  • College — grade 13 to 16
  • Graduate / specialist — grade 17+

What this tells you about your own writing

A few things the table shows:

  • Plain wording scores low. The patient instructions sample scores about grade 3, and the Genesis excerpt about grade 4. Both use short sentences and short words.
  • A famous speech can be plain. The Gettysburg Address excerpt scores about grade 9 here, easier than the Declaration, the Constitution or Roosevelt's speech.
  • Legal language is its own genre. The tax code paragraph is one sentence of 133 words and scores about grade 44. The sample license is one sentence of 88 words and scores about grade 34. Very long sentences push every formula up.
  • Verse confuses the formulas. The nursery rhyme "Mary's Lamb" scores about grade 10, because its twelve short lines have only two full stops. The formulas see two long sentences.

Methodology

Ten of the 17 texts are excerpts of public-domain works. Seven are original samples written for this page and labelled "sample". Each is 52 to 133 words long.

On 8 October 2026 the excerpts were checked against published texts, including the National Archives transcript of the Declaration, Project Gutenberg for Hamlet and The Ambassadors, Representative Poetry Online for "Mary's Lamb", The American Presidency Project for Roosevelt's address, and Cornell's Legal Information Institute for the tax code.

Scoring uses the same in-browser engine documented on the formulas page — Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman–Liau, and Automated Readability Index. No third-party APIs, no smoothing. Other calculators may give different numbers, because they split sentences and count syllables differently.

Want a text added? Email [email protected] with the source and a public-domain link.