One refund policy, scored twice
Load sample fills the box with a 92-word refund policy, written the way most policies get written. Four sentences, the longest at 39 words, and 21 words of three or more syllables. The five grade formulas place it between 16.2 and 17.9. Flesch Reading Ease lands at 18.9, inside the band Rudolf Flesch labeled very confusing.
Below is the same policy rewritten for a customer reading it on a phone.
Before
Members who wish to request a refund for an annual plan purchased online are required to submit their application within fourteen days of the original transaction date, accompanied by the order reference and a brief explanation of the circumstances. Applications received after this period will be evaluated individually…
- Median grade
- 17.0
- Reading Ease
- 18.9
- Words per sentence
- 23.0
- Syllables per word
- 1.95
- Longest sentence
- 39 words
After
Want a refund on your annual plan? Send your order number within 14 days of paying, along with a short note on what went wrong. Requests after 14 days go to our billing team, who review each one separately. We return the money to the card or account you paid with. Most refunds reach your statement within five to seven business days, though some banks take longer.
- Median grade
- 6.6
- Reading Ease
- 78.3
- Words per sentence
- 13.4
- Syllables per word
- 1.36
- Longest sentence
- 18 words
Every fact survived: the 14-day window, the order number, the billing team review, the payment method and the wait. Words such as accompanied, circumstances and occasionally went, along with the habit of chaining three clauses with commas.
Pushing further stops paying off. A 61-word version scored grade 3.1, but lost the phrase annual plan and read like a text message. For a page people check before asking for money back, grade 6 to 8 keeps the detail and stays easy.
Word choice moved the grade more than short sentences
Flesch-Kincaid has two inputs, and the weights tell you where to spend your editing time.
grade = 0.39 × words per sentence + 11.8 × syllables per word − 15.59- +0.39 gradefor every extra word in the average sentence
- +1.18 gradesfor every 0.1 added to the average syllables per word
In the refund rewrite, shorter sentences (23.0 down to 13.4 words) took 3.7 grades off. Plainer words (1.95 down to 1.36 syllables) took 7.0 off. Splitting sentences is the edit most writers try first, yet swapping one five-syllable word for a one-syllable word does more per keystroke.
| Draft word | Plain swap | Syllables |
|---|---|---|
| approximately | about | 5 to 2 |
| individually | one by one | 6 to 3 |
| occasionally | sometimes | 5 to 2 |
| additional | more | 4 to 1 |
| sufficient | enough | 3 to 2 |
| purchase | buy | 2 to 1 |
| in order to | to | 4 to 1 |
The Long words you repeat list under the tool sorts your three-syllable words by count. Fix the top entry first, since each swap pays off every time the word appears.
What each formula counts
| Formula | Built by | Counts | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flesch Reading Ease | Rudolf Flesch, 1948 | Words per sentence, syllables per word | 0 to 100, higher reads easier |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade | J. Peter Kincaid for the US Navy, 1975 | The same two inputs, reweighted | US school grade |
| Gunning Fog | Robert Gunning, 1952 | Words per sentence, share of 3+ syllable words | Years of schooling |
| SMOG | G. Harry McLaughlin, 1969 | 3+ syllable words per 30 sentences | Grade for full comprehension |
| Coleman-Liau | Meri Coleman and T. L. Liau, 1975 | Letters and sentences per 100 words | US school grade |
| Automated Readability Index | R. J. Senter and E. A. Smith for the US Air Force, 1967 | Characters per word, words per sentence | US school grade |
The big number in the tool is the median of the five grade formulas, so one outlier never sets your grade. The line under it gives the range. A range wider than three grades points to unusual word shapes, covered next.
Why a technical draft scores high on one formula and low on another
Flesch, Fog and SMOG count syllables. Coleman-Liau and the Automated Readability Index count letters. Most English words keep the two in step. A few break the link:
- strengths has one syllable and nine letters. Letter-based formulas call it long, syllable formulas call it short.
- idea has three syllables and four letters, the reverse case.
- PostgreSQL, OAuth and other product names get a syllable guess from spelling rules, which misfires on words nobody says the way they are spelled.
API guides, drug names and legal Latin push the syllable formulas up fast. When your range is wide and Coleman-Liau sits lowest, long words drive the grade, not sentence length. Gunning Fog also skips capitalized words mid-sentence and hyphenated compounds, so a draft full of product names scores lower on Fog than on SMOG.
Targets people set in writing
| Who | Target | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| American Medical Association | Grade 6 or below | Patient education material |
| State of Florida | Flesch Reading Ease of 45 or higher | Insurance policy forms, under Florida Statutes section 627.4145 |
| GOV.UK content design | Reading age of 9 | Pages on the UK government site |
| US Plain Writing Act of 2010 | No number | Federal documents must be clear, but the act sets no score |
The Aim for menu in the tool offers grades 6, 8, 10 and 12, and draws a red line at your pick on every formula bar. Grade 8 is the default because public web pages reach readers of every level. Pick grade 12 for an engineering report and the tool stops nagging about terms your readers know.
Where the scores mislead
- English only. All six formulas were fitted to English prose. Spanish and German have their own, Fernández Huerta and Amstad, and English scores on those languages come out wrong.
- Meaning is invisible. Shuffle the words of any sentence into nonsense and every score stays the same, since the formulas never check word order. A low grade on muddled text is still muddled text.
- Syllables are estimated. The counter follows spelling rules plus a short list of exceptions, with no dictionary. Names, borrowed words and acronyms miss by a syllable now and then, enough to move a short sample by half a grade.
- Short text is noisy. Under 100 words, one long sentence swings every score. SMOG marks itself rough below 30 sentences, the sample size its author used.
- Line breaks end sentences. Headings, bullet items and table rows without a full stop each count as one short sentence and pull the grade down. Paste body copy only for a fair reading.
- Numbers count as one-syllable words. “2026” scores like “cat”, so a draft heavy with figures reads easier than it is.
- Copy link carries your text. Scoring runs in your browser and nothing reaches Toolexe, but a copied link holds the draft in the address. Skip it for private text. Drafts too long for a link get refused, so use Copy report for those.