Skip to content
Menu
My Writer’s Notebook
  • The Notebooks
  • Writer Tools Blog
  • Subscribe
My Writer’s Notebook

How to check the readability of your book

Posted on March 3, 2020January 4, 2021

After you write your story, how can you know what reading level it is? Would you like to be able to tell your readers, your editor, your publisher what age group your book is appropriate for, as far as skill-level?

In Microsoft Word, there is a fairly simple test you can run to find out how easy your writing is to understand, and even what grade level can read it. It’s called Document Readability and Flesch-Kincaid Levels.

Here’s a How To post on this awesome writer tool:

One caveat: you will have to complete a full automated spell check on the entire document to get the results. If you haven’t done it already, it could take a lot of time to get to the end. But I always recommend running a perfunctory spell-check on your document at every stage, so you might as well run one!

Open your document in Word. Go to File, select Options. In the Options window, go to Proofing:

Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make sure these two items are checked off:

  1. Check grammar with spelling
  2. Show readability statistics

Click OK, and close Options.

In your document, go to the Review tab, and click Spelling & Grammar

This will begin a spelling/grammar check.  This is the part that might take a while if you haven’t already done a spell-check. Once it’s finished, it will display your results:

Here’s the reading level for my recent book, The Starless Girl, which is perfect, because it’s YA, and I normally recommend my writing for grades 6 and above.

Flesch Reading Ease is a reading score out of 100.  The higher the score, the easier it is to understand.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level refers to the US school grade level that could read it. This is great to know when speaking to people about your book, especially if you’re writing in the middle-grade, YA, or NA markets. It’s also good to know for meta-data on Amazon, where you can denote what grade it’s appropriate for.

Do you know what reading level your book is?

Share this:

  • Tweet

Hi! I’m Liz Delton.

I'm the writer behind the notebooks, a mom, a tea drinker, and author with too many hobbies.

Subscribe & Receive your Free Writer Toolkit

* indicates required

Join our community on Facebook for writing tips, motivation, and positivity!

Latest from the Writer Tools Blog

  • Show Don’t Tell (with examples) January 17, 2021
  • 8 Free (Actually Useful) Tools for Self Publishers September 14, 2020
  • Social Media Calendar & Scheduling Facebook Posts September 1, 2020
  • Universal Book Links June 16, 2020
  • How to prepare for a book signing March 10, 2020

MyWritersNotebook.com is home of the Writer’s Notebook: A Guided Journal to Plan Your Story, a valuable tool for writers and authors.

Blog Stats

  • 818 hits

Liz Delton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

©2021 My Writer’s Notebook | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!