How to reach a Flesch reading ease score of 50 or higher
A Flesch reading ease of 50 or higher means short sentences and common words, which is easier for people to read and for answer engines to quote. Shorten sentences to under 20 words, replace jargon with everyday terms, and break dense paragraphs into lists.
By ratemysite.ai editorial team. Updated .
How do you fix it?
- Run your main text through a readability checker and note the Flesch score; below 50 means the text is dense.
- Split every sentence longer than 20 words into two, and aim for an average of 15 words.
- Replace jargon and long words with plain ones, such as "use" for "utilize" and "help" for "facilitate".
- Turn runs of three or more items into a bulleted list, and keep paragraphs to 3 or 4 lines.
- Re-run the audit and confirm the Readability check passes.
What is the Flesch reading ease score?
Flesch reading ease is a formula that rates text from 0 to 100 using the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word. Higher is easier. A score of 60 to 70 is plain English, and below 30 is typical of academic papers. The formula was published by Rudolf Flesch in 1948 and is still built into most writing tools because it is simple and predictable.
How do I make my writing easier to read?
Work on sentence length first, because it has the largest effect. Read each sentence aloud; if you run out of breath, split it. Then swap long words for short ones and cut weak openers like "it is important to note that". Use active voice and put the key fact at the start of the sentence. Lists and short paragraphs help too. People scan most web pages, and answer engines prefer passages that make sense on their own.
How much does this check matter?
- This check is worth about 1.7% of the overall score.
- A finished report is reused for 24 hours before you can re-analyze it.
- Each page is fetched with a timeout of 10 seconds, and HTML larger than 2 MB is not audited.
What else do people ask?
- What is a good Flesch score?
- Scores of 60 to 70 are plain English that most adults follow easily. 50 to 60 is fairly difficult but fine for professional topics.
- Should I simplify technical content?
- Simplify the wording, not the facts. Define technical terms once and use them consistently.