It’s caught fire on Twitter: a test that lets you know the reading level of your blog.

This is me:

It works pretty fast — in mere seconds.  It’s got me wondering: what’s the criteria here?  Word length?  Paragraph length?  Letters per word?

First, I did some quick pings to test accuracy.  Some results:

1) CNN.com: Junior High School

2) MSNBC.com: Junior High School

3) FoxNews.com: High School

4) NYTimes.com: Junior High School

5) The New Congressional Budget Office Blog (c/o David Wescott, for control purposes): Genius (no surprise)

While generally on target, the notion that Fox News has a reading level that is greater than the New York Times raises some suspicions.  This isn’t to say that I think that GOPers are generally less intelligent and unable to read the New York Times (I’m not a hater, I swear), it just either a) goes against popular sentiment as to the “elitism” and reading caliber of the New York Times, or b) puts the validity of the test itself into question.

It’s also worth asking, what value does this test have?  As Shea Gunther is pointing out on his Twitter, there’s definitely a negative correlation between readability and audience.  That is to say, those blogs that are written at a higher reading level tend to have smaller audiences. But this goes against some writers’ beliefs that “if you write something really smart, they will come.”  It seems, then, that there’s a difference between “saying something really smart” and “conveying a smart idea to your audience effectively.”

There’s also something to be said about niche blogs and readability.  As I’ve shown, the Congressional Budget Office blog has a “genius” reading level.  However, there’s value here.   It’s a “wonky” blog, and is likely to be a primary source of other blogs.  Due to the audience — experts and wonks — the blog is able to take a much different approach in readability.  These blogs may take this information, and bring it to a much more mainstream blog, by — as I’ve said — conveying the smart idea effectively, and in a way that they can approach the material.

Some take-aways:

1) Know your audience.  If you’re writing at genius levels, but want to cater to a large audience, you likely need to change the reading level at which you write at, in order to make it much more.  If you want to reach wonks, “genius” it up!  Make my head explode!

2) Find simple ways to explain abstract/smart concepts.   Part of a good writer’s or teacher’s job is to take information that is difficult to understand, and convey it into terms that everyone can comprehend.  It’s something that makes a writer a great writer.  Doing this effectively, it seems, maximizes you audience, yet allows you to become a respected opinion leader.

3) Don’t take this test too seriously, and use other evaluation tools.  I have no idea how this test works.  It’s certainly fun, and there’s certainly things to learn from it, but use the best feedback tool as possible: your readers.  Look at your metrics, and the style that your “greatest blog hits” are written in.  Are the paragraphs shorter than average?  What are the themes?  How do you explain concepts?  What posts inspired the most conversation?  And of course, look at the qualitative feedback, too.  Use these hints and clues to refine your writing and improve future successes.

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