Readability Checker

Flesch Reading Ease runs from 0 to 100 and is built from exactly two inputs: your average sentence length and your average syllables per word. That is the whole formula. Plain English lands around 60 to 70, which is roughly an eighth grade reading level, and most strong social writing scores higher than that.

Because it only measures those two things, it is a proxy rather than a verdict. It cannot tell whether your argument is good, whether your structure works, or whether the piece is worth reading. What it can tell you, reliably, is whether you have made the reader work harder than necessary to follow you.

A sentence over about 25 words asks the reader to hold too many clauses in their head at once. On a phone, in a feed, next to everything else competing for attention, they simply stop. This is the single highest-leverage thing to fix, and it is why the tool lists your long sentences rather than just giving you a number.

The fix is almost always the same, and it is almost always easy: find the conjunction in the middle and replace it with a full stop. Two clear sentences beat one clever one. Short sentences also create rhythm, and rhythm is what carries a reader from the hook to the point.

The formula rewards short words and short sentences, so you can push any text toward 100 by stripping out every precise term and chopping everything into fragments. The result reads like a children's book and says less than it did before. That is a worse piece of writing with a better score.

Use it as a nudge. If you are at 30, something is genuinely wrong and readers are struggling. If you are at 65, stop optimising and go work on the idea. The score is a smoke alarm, not a style guide, and no reader has ever admired a post for its Flesch number.