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Readability

What Readability Score Should You Aim For?

Readability is important for communicating clearly with your audience. Learn about readability, what a readability score is, and find out what readability score you should aim for.

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Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

Your content may be well-researched with the right keywords naturally sprinkled throughout the text. However, it may fail to engage an audience if it's not readable.

A simple definition of readability is how easy it is to read a text. It’s about more than that, though. It’s also about how enjoyable it is for readers to consume your content

People aren’t necessarily going to stick around for an article they’re struggling to read. This is why finding and achieving the right readability score for your audience is so important.

So, for best results, what readability score should you aim for? Read on to learn about readability, readability scores, and the ideal ones for the most common tests.

Key Points (TL;DR)

  • A readability score typically estimates the level of education readers need to understand a text.
  • There are several readability formulas, including:some text
    • Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease
    • Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
    • Gunning Fog Index
    • FORCAST Grade Level
    • SMOG Index.
  • Some formulas are used more often in certain situations than others.

What Is a Readability Score?

A readability score is a number that tells you how much education your readers need to understand your text. 

Example: If the number corresponds to a 5th-grade level, it should be easy for 5th-graders to understand it.

Now, this may sound pretty straightforward, but here’s the thing, there are several ways to calculate readability. From the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease test to the SMOG index, each formula is different, and a good score on one may not be so great on another. 

So, the readability score you should aim for can depend on the formula.

What Readability Score Should You Aim for?

Generally speaking, you should aim for a readability score appropriate for a grade 7 to 8 reading level (keep in mind this might not correspond to the number of the score itself). However, aiming for a slightly higher grade level may work if you’re trying to rank on Google. 

Our study into the best readability score to rank on Google found that most online content is written for a grade 12 education.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that different formulas can yield different results. Let’s say you use a readability checker to calculate scores using multiple formulas. You may find that a piece achieves different readability scores that vary by formula.

To help you narrow what’s a good readability score to aim for, we’re outlining some of the most commonly used readability formulas for assessing the grade level of content:

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease

One of the most — if not the most — popular readability tests is the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease formula. It looks something like this: 

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease = 206.835 − (1.015 x average sentence length) − (84.6 x average syllables per word)

To calculate average sentence length, divide total words by total sentences. For average syllables per word, divide the total syllables by the total number of words.

What’s a good readability score on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease test? To rank well in Google, our readability study found it was best to aim for a score between 45 and 60.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

Yes, the Flesch-Kincaid team came up with not one but two readability tests. Like the Reading Ease formula, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level uses the average sentence length and average syllables per word, but this time, the result directly corresponds with a US school grade level.

This is the formula:

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = (0.39 x average sentence length) + (11.8 x average syllables per word) − 15.59

What’s a good readability score on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test? A score of 8 to 10 can reach a wide audience; for an audience with a post-graduate level education, aim for a score of 12 or lower.

Gunning Fog Index

Originally developed to help businesses improve their writing, researchers now use the Gunning Fog Index to help improve the clarity of their papers. Instead of using syllables like the previous two, this formula focuses on complex words and long sentences.

It looks like this:

Gunning Fog Index = 0.4 x {(average sentence length) + (percentage of hard words)}

What’s a good readability score on the Gunning Fog Index? Our analysis found that it’s best to aim for a score between 11 and 13

FORCAST Grade Level

If you’re creating training documents like manuals, questionnaires, and multiple-choice tests, then the FORCAST readability formula may be a good fit. Unlike the above formulas, this one doesn’t include sentences in its calculation — it’s all about the vocabulary.

Here is the formula:

FORCAST Grade Level = 20 − (number of single-syllable words in a 150-word sample / number of total words)

That’s it! There’s just one important thing to note about this one. Since the FORCAST formula was designed for technical writing, not school materials, it can’t calculate text below a 5th-grade level. 

What’s a good readability score on the FORCAST readability formula? According to our readability findings, you should go for a score between 12 to 14 here.

SMOG Index

Though there are many others, the last readability formula we’ll cover in this article is the SMOG Index. SMOG stands for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook and estimates how much education the average person would need to understand a text.

The formula for this one is a little more complex:

SMOG = 1.043 x √(total number of polysyllabic words) x 30) + 3.1291

The SMOG Index is primarily used in the legal and healthcare sectors. It was designed to start at readability levels of grade 5 (USA) or grade 4 (UK).

What’s a good readability score on the SMOG Index? Like many others, it depends on the audience you are writing for. If your audience primarily has a grade 10 or higher education, then aim for a score of 10 or below.

Readability is Key to Clear Communication

First and foremost, prioritize creating readable content that is easy to read and enjoy

Using a readability checker to crunch the numbers of readability formulas is a convenient way to evaluate and edit the readability of text. Keep in mind that the best readability score depends on the audience you are writing for. Tailor your content to communicate clearly with your readers.

Now, get out there and start creating more readable content! Your audience will thank you.

Jess Sawyer

Jess Sawyer is a seasoned writer and content marketing expert with a passion for crafting engaging and SEO-optimized content. With several years of experience in the digital marketing, Jess has honed her skills in creating content that not only captivates audiences but also ranks high on search engine results.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

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I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

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After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

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Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

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ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

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Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

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For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

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