Readability Checker Example: Flesch 54 and Grade Level

These sentences are dragging your Flesch score down. Rewrite each one as 2–3 shorter sentences.

Before you rewrite 94 sentences, be clear about what this score is and is not.

Google does not compute a Flesch score for your page, and readability is not a ranking factor. The formula was devised in 1948 for the US Navy, and it is arithmetic, not comprehension. It counts two things:

• Average words per sentence
• Average syllables per word

That is the entire calculation. It does not know what your words mean. It cannot tell whether an argument is coherent, whether a paragraph follows from the one before it, or whether the page is true. It is a proxy — and like every proxy, it can be gamed to the point of being useless.

Take the score as a symptom and go looking for the cause. A 54 on a B2B article almost always means one of these, and each has a real fix:

• Corporate register. "Utilise", "leverage", "endeavour", "subsequent", "facilitate". These are longer synonyms for words that already existed. They are not more precise — they are more formal, and formality is not expertise. Every one of them costs syllables and buys nothing.
• Nominalisation. Verbs turned into nouns. "We made an assessment of" instead of "we assessed". "Provides an improvement in" instead of "improves". This is the single biggest driver of B2B bloat, and it inflates syllable count and sentence length simultaneously.
• Stacked subordinate clauses. Look at the 38-word example. It is not one thought; it is three, welded together with "that" and "which".

Fix the cause and the number follows on its own. Chase the number directly and you will shorten sentences that were doing useful work.

Passive voice at 18% is flagged as "too high". There is no evidence for the 10% threshold, and passive voice is not a defect. It is a construction, with legitimate uses, and the advice to eliminate it is one of the most over-applied rules in writing.

Passive is correct when the actor is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately de-emphasised:

The real question is never "is this passive?" but "is the actor being hidden, and should it be?" Passive voice used to dodge responsibility — "mistakes were made", "the outage was experienced" — is a genuine problem and it is a problem of honesty, not grammar. Passive voice used because the object is what the sentence is about is simply correct English. A percentage target cannot tell these apart, and 18% on a technical article is entirely unremarkable.

There is a real argument connecting clear writing to citation by answer engines. It is worth stating carefully, because the usual version overclaims.

What is not established: that answer engines score readability, or preferentially cite pages with better Flesch scores. No provider has published such a criterion.

What is defensible: an answer engine constructing a response needs a self-contained passage that can be lifted out and still make sense. That is the actual mechanic. And a 38-word sentence with three subordinate clauses is structurally difficult to extract — it depends on context, it cannot be quoted in isolation, and it hedges its own claim into invisibility.

1. Read the seven flagged sentences aloud. Not the score — the sentences. Any sentence you cannot say in one breath is too long, and this test is more reliable than any index because it engages the thing the formula is only approximating.
2. Split at the joins. The report is right that "and", "but", "which" and "whilst" mark the seams. The 38-word example contains three separate claims and each deserves its own sentence.
3. Cut the nominalisations. Search your draft for "-tion of", "-ment of", "-ance of". Almost every one conceals a stronger verb.
4. Leave the technical terms alone. If your reader is a B2B software buyer, they know what "enterprise resource planning" means, and replacing it with something simpler makes the writing less useful, not more. Write for the reader you have, not for the formula.
5. Ignore the grade-level target. "Aim for Grade 10–11" is arbitrary. There is no evidence that Grade 12.4 costs a B2B page anything, and no evidence that Grade 10 gains it anything.

Vary your sentence length. The one thing every readability formula misses entirely is rhythm. Prose of uniformly short sentences is exhausting to read — it has no cadence, and it reads like instructions. A long sentence that carries a complex idea, followed by a short one that lands it, is better writing than either on its own. The average is not the point. The variance is.

What is a good Flesch Reading Ease score?

60–70 is Plain English — suitable for most general audiences. 70–80 is Easy — suitable for teenagers and above. Below 50 is Difficult — suitable only for professional or academic audiences. For most web content targeting general consumers, aim for a score above 60.

Does readability affect SEO?

Readability is not a ranking factor and Google does not compute a Flesch score for your page. Clear writing still matters, but for reasons that run through the reader rather than through a metric: content people can actually follow gets read, shared and linked. Treat the score as a smoke alarm that tells you to go and look at your sentences — not as a target to optimise towards.

How do I improve readability?

Use shorter sentences (under 20 words). Replace passive voice with active voice. Use common words instead of jargon. Break long paragraphs into shorter ones. Use bullet points for lists. Add subheadings every 200–300 words. The Readability Checker highlights specific sentences to rewrite.

Should I rewrite my content to hit a target Flesch score?

No. The formula counts two things — average words per sentence and average syllables per word — and that is the entire calculation. It does not know what your words mean, whether the argument is coherent, or whether the page is true. You can score 80 and communicate nothing, while "photosynthesis" is a five-syllable word no rewrite can improve. Optimising the number rather than the writing produces choppy, patronising prose. Fix the causes — corporate register, nominalisation, stacked clauses — and the score follows on its own.

Is 18% passive voice really too high?

There is no evidence for the 10% threshold, and 18% on a technical article is unremarkable. Passive voice is a construction, not a defect. It is correct when the actor is unknown ("the server was compromised on Tuesday"), irrelevant ("your data is encrypted at rest"), or deliberately de-emphasised. The real question is never "is this passive?" but "is the actor being hidden, and should it be?" Passive used to dodge responsibility — "mistakes were made" — is a problem of honesty, not grammar, and a percentage target cannot tell the two apart.

Does clearer writing help me get cited by AI engines?

Probably, but not for the reason usually given. No provider has published a criterion that scores readability or prefers better Flesch scores. What is defensible is structural: an answer engine building a response needs a self-contained passage that can be lifted out and still make sense, and a 38-word sentence with three subordinate clauses cannot be extracted without its context. Ask the question as a heading and answer it directly in the first sentence beneath. The connection between clarity and citation is real — it just runs through structure and self-containment, not syllable counts.

Should every sentence be short?

No, and this is what every readability formula misses. Prose of uniformly short sentences has no rhythm and is exhausting to read — it sounds like instructions. A long sentence carrying a complex idea, followed by a short one that lands it, is better than either alone. Read your flagged sentences aloud: any sentence you cannot say in one breath is too long, and that test is more reliable than any index. The average sentence length is not the point. The variance is.