Does It Take An 8th-Grade
Education to Read Page Six?

Check out this readability test, which uses three different reading-level algorithims to determine the ease or difficulty of reading a Website’s content.

It’s all based on the number of words per sentence, number of syllables per word and the percentage of words with three or more syllables, among other things.

The Gunning Fog test is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. (Who knew it takes an 8th-grade education to understand Page Six?) And a higher number is usually a bad thing - a la Strunk & White, clarity and concision are key.

Here’s how a few blogs and columns performed, based on their most recent content as of May 24 at 9pm:

Blogs
Jossip: 8.17
Gawker: 8.40
FishbowlNY: 8.61
Wonkette: 8.74
Us Weekly: 8.76
Dealbreaker: 9.77
Buzz Machine: 9.92
Romenesko: 9.98
Daily Kos: 10.24
InstaPundit: 10.50
Muckraked: 10.55
Defamer: 10.82
Talking Points Memo: 11.13
CBS Public Eye: 11.49
Captain’s Quarters: 13.48

Columnists
Arianna Huffington: 8.86
Jack Shafer: 9.21
Andrew Sullivan: 9.52
Michelle Malkin: 10.41
Christopher Hitchens: 10.69
John Fund: 12.45

Gossip Columns
Page Six: 8.42
Rush & Molloy: 8.87
Liz Smith: 9.05
Cindy Adams: 9.46
Lloyd Grove: 9.70
Ben Widdicombe: 9.87

Popularity: 2%

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Does It Take An 8th-Grade
Education to Read Page Six?”

1. Eric Alder Says:
   May 29th, 2006 at 2:18 pm

   Are you sure you’re taking out the quotes from other people before you test Romenesko?

2. Heruk Laoowe Says:
   August 28th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

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