I consider my writing style to be pretty plain and understandable, but online readability scorers put my writing as high school to college level, that is “difficult” to “professional”. My previous post about the CLRS book was universally considered difficult due to the jargon and many-syllable words used. Aside from specific jargon, I am pretty sure a middle schooler could understand my writing reasonably well, even if it comes off as wordy. I try not to be wordy as ChatGPT is notorious for being, but also maintain an informal, conversational tone for the blog. My old writing had more very long sentences, even if not technically run-on, and in recent years I’ve consciously made my sentences shorter.
For what it’s worth, the Flesch reading-ease score is based on the ratio of total words / total sentences and total syllables / total words, where higher ratios mean lower reading-ease score. The score isn’t lower bounded, and Wikipedia gives this particularly long sentence about sharks in Moby-Dick as -146.77.
“Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other’s live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea.”