How readable is your writing?
Choose an original sample or paste your own English prose. See how sentence length and syllables shape two familiar readability scores.
Flesch Reading Ease
Higher scores indicate easier language. Scores can fall below 0 or above 100; this calculator preserves those results.
Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level
An approximate U.S. grade-level indicator for the text, not a student’s reading level or an age recommendation.
See the calculation
Both formulas use the same counts. Calculations use full precision; displayed results are rounded.
Review or correct the counts
Pronunciation can vary. Adjust any word’s syllables below; the change applies to every occurrence of that word in this analysis. Recalculating the text resets corrections.
| Word | Uses | Syllables per use | Method |
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How this calculator counts—and what scores cannot tell you
Words are alphabetic tokens; contractions count as one word, and hyphenated terms count as separate words. Standalone digits are excluded. For best results, replace numbers, URLs, and abbreviations with the words a reader would say.
Sentence counting uses periods, question marks, and exclamation marks, protecting common titles, initials, and decimal points. A final unpunctuated fragment counts as one sentence. Blank lines separate blocks; single line breaks do not end sentences. Lists and headings may need manual correction.
Syllables come from an embedded CMU Pronouncing Dictionary when available, using the first listed pronunciation. Words not found use a spelling-based estimate. You can inspect and correct all counts. Other calculators can produce different scores because they tokenize text or estimate syllables differently.
Use complete English prose, preferably at least 100 words. Very short passages are unstable. These formulas do not measure background knowledge, conceptual difficulty, content suitability, organization, or actual comprehension. They do not produce Lexile scores.
Reading Ease = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words).
Grade Level = 0.39 × (words ÷ sentences) + 11.8 × (syllables ÷ words) − 15.59.
References: Flesch–Kincaid formulas and background · CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.
Sample passages & dictionary license
All sample passages were generated for this demonstration and contain no third-party literary excerpts. You may reuse and adapt them. The dictionary-derived syllable data is bundled under the following license.
Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. The contents of this file are deemed to be source code. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of this dictionary. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.