Fry Readability Graph

The Fry readability graph estimates the US school grade of a text from two counts: syllables and sentences per 100 words. You plot one point and read the grade from the band it lands in. This calculator shows a Fry grade for any text of 100 words or more.

Last updated 6 November 2026

What the Fry graph is

Edward Fry published the graph in 1968. The version most people use is the one reprinted in his book Elementary Reading Instruction (McGraw-Hill, 1977, p. 217). Fry marked it “Reproduction permitted, no copyright”.

Unlike Flesch-Kincaid or SMOG, Fry is not an equation. It is a chart. The horizontal axis is syllables per 100 words, from 108 to 174. The vertical axis is sentences per 100 words, from 25.0 down to 2.0. Curved lines divide the chart into bands for grades 1 to 12 and college.

How to use the Fry graph

1. Pick three 100-word samples, from the start, middle and end of the text. Each sample starts at the beginning of a sentence.
2. Skip numbers when you count the 100 words.
3. Count the syllables in each sample.
4. Count the sentences in each sample. If the 100th word falls mid-sentence, count that last sentence as a fraction, to the nearest tenth.
5. Average the three syllable counts and the three sentence counts.
6. Find the syllable average on the horizontal axis and the sentence average on the vertical axis. The band where they meet is the grade.

Two dark corners of the chart give no grade. One is for samples with very long words, the other for very long sentences. Text that lands there is unusual enough that Fry did not trust the result.

Fry graph worked example

This passage was written for this page:

Fry built his graph for teachers who needed a quick answer. Count one hundred words from the start of a sentence. Then count the sentences in those words, and the syllables. Do the same in the middle of the book and near the end. Take the average of each count. Find the number of syllables along the top of the graph and the number of sentences down the side. The point where they meet falls in a band, and the band gives the grade. If the point lands in one of the dark corners, the sample is unusual and the graph gives no grade. Most school texts land well inside the bands, so the method works for them. It is quick to do by hand.

It is too short for three separate samples, so this calculator uses one: the first 100 words. It counts 123 syllables and 7.8 sentences. On the graph, that point falls in the grade 4 band.

The Ohio State University’s guide to the graph gives its own example: 140.6 syllables and 7.9 sentences, which it places at grade 7. This calculator gives the same grade for that point.

How this calculator reads the graph

A computer cannot look at a chart, so the bands have to be turned into numbers. This calculator traced the grade lines from the rendition published by The Ohio State University’s AHEC Clear Health Communication Program. It then checks that every grade label on that chart lands in its own band, and that Ohio State’s example comes out at grade 7.

Other tools trace the graph differently, so a point near a line can get a different grade elsewhere. Treat a Fry result as an approximate grade, not an exact one. Points in the dark corners, or outside the axes, get no grade.

The Fry grade is shown in its own “More scores” card. It is not averaged into the consensus grade, which uses the six standard formulas.

Fry vs other readability formulas

Fry uses the same two ingredients as Flesch-Kincaid: sentence length and syllables. Flesch-Kincaid combines them with a formula and gives a decimal grade. Fry places them on a chart and gives a whole grade band.

Gunning Fog and SMOG count only words of three or more syllables. ARI and Coleman-Liau count letters instead of syllables.

Frequently asked questions