Quantitative indexes and rating systesm are used to give information about general trends and allow us to make comparisons and judgements.
The Fog Index is one measure of reading difficulty. Sometimes magazine and newspaper editors use it. Do any of our Education POE's have experience with something like this? The fog index uses word count, sentence length, and word size.
For our purposes we'll define words with three or more syllables as "big." "Big" words which are repeated will be counted each time. However, not all words with three syllables will be considered "big." Proper names are not "big," and neither are compound words formed from easy words (like "everything") and formed from a suffix (such as "ed" or "ing").
The formula is:
FI = 0.4 * ( # of words / # of sentences + 100*( # of "big" words / # of words ) )
An FI of 9 would indicate a 9th grade reading level, an FI of 12 would indicate a 12th grade reading level, and FI of 14 would indicate college sophomore level, and so on.