4 ms·
Yes, it's a bit silly! The reason the score is so off is because we use the Flesch Reading Ease algorithm[1] to calculate it, which was designed for the US Navy
by acabal 2y ago
Yes, it's a bit silly! The reason the score is so off is because we use the Flesch Reading Ease algorithm[1] to calculate it, which was designed for the US Navy to be able to score technical manuals. It works very well for most prose too... except highly modernist prose!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease
- AlbertCory 2y agoThanks. Maybe a simple fix is: don't use it for fiction. Since that's not its intent.
- hedora 2y agoAs an end-user of Standard Ebooks, I've found it works pretty well on average.
- acabal 2y agoIt works just fine for fiction. Ulysses is a very special edge case in the pantheon of all literature, so it's no surprise it doesn't work well for this one case.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoHow's it handle Finnegans Wake?
- robin_reala 2y agoGot another 11 years to wait before that enters the US public domain, unfortunately.
- Avid8329 2y agoUlysses has mostly "real" words while Finnegans Wake is largely made of portmanteaus. It'll be interesting to see the results!
- lapetitejort 2y agoI just ran it and got "segmentation fault (core dumped)". Is this one of Joyce's silly sentences he's famous for?
- AlbertCory 2y agoHe was such a futurist, that Joyce /s
- AlbertCory 2y ago> It works just fine for fiction how about some other well-known novels and their scores?
- throwup238 2y agoYou can sort their list by reading ease: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?page=21&per-page=48&sort=reading-ease https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?page=21&per-page=48&sort=r... A lot of John Stuart Mill and John Dewey
- AlbertCory 2y agoOK, I tried that. Among the hardest fiction: Moll Flanders Tristram Shandy Gulliver's Travels Robinson Crusoe
- dudinax 2y agoThe Sun Also Rises is easier than Winnie the Pooh. I can buy that.