The Fry Graph—No, You Won’t Find It in a Cookbook!

When my friend, Kris, who teaches English and Writing at a community college, critiqued the first few chapters of my manuscript, one of the first things she did was analyze them using the Fry Graph readability formula.

Unfortunately this formula doesn’t tell an author how much his readers will enjoy his writing, but it does calculate how easy or difficult his writing is to read. The Fry Graph result is a grade level. If the analysis result is 6.4, that means that most sixth graders would be able to read it. It counts the number of syllables and sentences in a hundred-word writing sample, and plots words vs. syllables on a graph. The more syllables and the fewer sentences there are, the higher the grade level.

It’s best to use descriptive or narrative parts of a piece of fiction, not dialogue.

The analysis is simple. This is how to do it.

So that’s great, you say, but what good is it?

Edward Fry developed the formula in 1969 as a quick way of determining the reading level of a book or document and it’s been in use ever since. Teachers and librarians love it because it helps them match a book with someone who can read it. Government agencies love it because it helps them make sure their public documents and instruction sheets are comprehensible to everyone, and writers love it because it helps us make sure we’re writing for our target audience.

But it says nothing about the complexity of the work’s subject matter and concepts. Kris says that John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is written at a 6.5 grade level, but the book deals with complex ideas and adult subject matter.

And then there’s Ernest Hemingway. I applied the Fry Graph formula to five randomly chosen hundred word segments from the first part of The Old Man and the Sea. Three of those scores fell in the dark area marked Long Sentences, which means that, according to Fry, the work of one of the great American fiction writers is invalid. But any middle school student could have told you that. Nice, short, easy words, but killer long sentences. The other two samples were at a 6.5 and a ninth grade level.

Three randomly chosen samples from my manuscript came out to 3.5, 6.5, and 9, which tells me that my language varies and that it may not be challenging enough for a young adult audience. But the subject matter is definitely young adult level.

So do I need to beef up my language?

I’m still thinking about it.