Stats of the PS

[RockyMtnHighMama]

PS writers... have you used your word processing software to find out what the passive sentence percentage, reading difficulty and reading level of your PS are? 

About what reading level should a PS writer aim for?

My second draft is coming in at 6% passive sentences, 58.9 reading difficulty (100 is easiest... general text is supposed to be 60-80), and 9th grade reading level. And it's 948 words long.

How does that compare to successful PS? Other PS y'all are writing? Do I need to tighten it up or tone it down?

(and I have a sniffing suspicion this post is either toolish or gunnerish... but I'm curious anyway!)

[Ginatio]

since you're applying to Colorado, I'd aim for a 5th grade reading level with about a 90% reading level of ease.

[strayfoxx]

since you're applying to Colorado, I'd aim for a 5th grade reading level with about a 90% reading level of ease.

[mkagan]

can microsoft word do those calculations? if so how? that sounds interesting

[RockyMtnHighMama]

Thanks, Ginatio... I'll write it so my 10 year old can read it... oops, he can read Tolkien.  Colorado isn't dumb, it's just falling apart. And how smart can I be, applying to attend the last 1L in the dungeon building?

Cool picture, strayfoxx. Where'd you find it?

MKagan, yes MS Word does those calculations... it is part of the Grammar/Spelling checker. Go to Tools, Options, and select the Grammar/Spelling tab. Check the box for Readability Score (or whatever it says). Then when you run the Grammar Checker, it finishes by reporting the scores.

[londongirl]

Really interesting post - thanks.
Don't know how successful my PS is, well see, but for what it's worth, here are its stats:

1480 words (needs cutting by about 200 for the schools I'm looking at)

words/sentence: 21.8
charas/word: 4.7
Passive sentences: 15%
Reading ease: 52.2
Grade level: 11.2

voila....

[swifty]

Please people, please don't just accept what comes from Microsoft as a good indicator of anything.  There has to be a better way to analyze your PS.  Please god almighty, do not rely on a MS product.  Even though I despise anythng MS has developed, it generally is not a good idea to go off just what one apllication says. If you run your PS through Word Perfect, or any other application, just use it as a guide, and COMPARE the numbers that come up. 
BTW, MS quarterly earnings came out for the quarter ended June 30th 2004.  For a freaking 3 month period, there figures are in the billions,  possibly the hundreds of billions, I'd have to double check.  At some point, when is enough enough?