Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

[p-chan]

Is anyone familiar with the Show Readability Statistics option in Word?
When it's enabled, after a spell/grammar check, it pops up a window
of statistics for the supposed readability of the passage or document,
based on certain formulas:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290943/en-us

I'm experiencing a problem with the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score.
Different computers with different (or even the same) version of Word
are behaving differently when the score is > 12.0.

The score is supposed to indicate the grade level of the text. Although
there are no grades above 12th in the United States, the score can
obviously exceed 12.0 based on the formula. On the copy of Word X and
2004 on a Mac that I have, even if the score is above 12.0, it caps it
at 12.0. On the copy of Word 2003 I am running, it'll display the
actual score (14.4 or whatever). The strange thing is that Word 2003 on
different computers will either cap at 12.0 or not, and I can't find any
settings to control this.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

That's a seriously interesting question. I will refer that to the Microsoft
Brains Trust for investigation

I can tell you what the answer will be, though: "It's a bug. It's supposed
to be capped at 12.0 on all computers. But the work-around we applied to
get the French Grammar Checker working properly in Word 2003 has broken the
mechanism!"

Or something like that...

The problem is that Word's code base is older than many of us (sadly, not
me...). Word dates back to around 1970... By now, the code has been hacked
and chopped and extended and repurposed and generally futzed with so much
that it is just seriously difficult to work out what happens in it and what
each piece is supposed to do.

The next version of Office coming out (Office 2007) has forced a re-write of
a lot of the really horrible bits, and as a result is already far quicker
and somewhat more stable (even though it's still in Beta....)

Cheers

Is anyone familiar with the Show Readability Statistics option in Word?
When it's enabled, after a spell/grammar check, it pops up a window
of statistics for the supposed readability of the passage or document,
based on certain formulas:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290943/en-us

I'm experiencing a problem with the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score.
Different computers with different (or even the same) version of Word
are behaving differently when the score is > 12.0.

The score is supposed to indicate the grade level of the text. Although
there are no grades above 12th in the United States, the score can
obviously exceed 12.0 based on the formula. On the copy of Word X and
2004 on a Mac that I have, even if the score is above 12.0, it caps it
at 12.0. On the copy of Word 2003 I am running, it'll display the
actual score (14.4 or whatever). The strange thing is that Word 2003 on
different computers will either cap at 12.0 or not, and I can't find any
settings to control this.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410