Update: My husband's response to the notion of "dumbing down" my blog was too pithy not to share:
Like any blogger, I appreciate all of my commenters. I really enjoy the fact that most of you leave thoughtful comments. Some of you even occasionally post comments which are as long as the post, even though my posts tend to be a bit longer than average, I believe. And most of you homeschool, so I already knew I had an educated readership.
But now it is official. In an online forum, Writing Thoughts shared Website Grader, a handy little tool designed to grade your site and give you suggestions to improve. Most interesting to me was the following:
I hereby award all of my readers who read and understand this blog an honorary doctorate in Educational Republitarianism from Homeschool U. Congratulations, and bear your honor with pride.
It is either that or "dumb down" my blog.
Related Tags: Website Grader, blogging
Yeah. You need to stop writing for 18th century farmers and start writing for 21st century college kids.Update 2: Dharmesh Shah, the developer of Website Grader, was kind enough to stop by and tell me a little about how the program determines readability. Old way: Flesch-Kincaid. New way: Gunning Fogg index. And that last site gives yet more info. The "problem" with my site is the fact that 34.23% of words used have three or more syllables. (I can't believe this post is actually generating updates.)
Like any blogger, I appreciate all of my commenters. I really enjoy the fact that most of you leave thoughtful comments. Some of you even occasionally post comments which are as long as the post, even though my posts tend to be a bit longer than average, I believe. And most of you homeschool, so I already knew I had an educated readership.
But now it is official. In an online forum, Writing Thoughts shared Website Grader, a handy little tool designed to grade your site and give you suggestions to improve. Most interesting to me was the following:
Readability Level: Advanced Degree PhDI like that, but apparently it may be detrimental to my traffic.
This score measures the approximate level of education necessary to read and understand the web page content. In most cases, the content should be made to be simple so that a majority of the target audience can understand it.Oh well. I say my target audience comprises those who can read at a college level, and perhaps even prefer to. I suspect that is why some of you gave up the newspaper.
I hereby award all of my readers who read and understand this blog an honorary doctorate in Educational Republitarianism from Homeschool U. Congratulations, and bear your honor with pride.
It is either that or "dumb down" my blog.Related Tags: Website Grader, blogging
