I do believe I am miffed!

[rabidsamfan]

(I stripped out all the html about cash advance loans, btw. I'm guessing that's there to get the google rating higher.)

Now honestly, if you look at my recent entries and consider the plethora of commas, complex sentences, arcane vocabulary and all, do YOU think of elementary school?

Comments

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I think your HTML is munged a bit.

And I think your writing is surely not elementary school level! Goodness!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, the html was definitely munged, but I finally got it right. Had to delete a bit more garbage, that's all.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

Very definately not. Maybe the test was set by a toddler?

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It gave a high school level to muskrat john! *sniff*

[frodobaggins252.livejournal.com]

Well, it's appropriate for my reading level in elementary school. Then again, I was reading The Hobbit at 6 and LotR at 7 LOL

On the other hand, it means it's infinitely accessable to anyone who might wish to read it ;)

**hugging erudite hobbit**

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I can't say that much. I did read Trixie Belden in first grade, but I also remember being terribly fond of Go Dog Go. What age I was when I was terribly fond of Go Dog Go I couldn't tell you, but I was so disappointed when the board book came out and they'd omitted the entire subplot.

[elendiari22.livejournal.com]

I think your journal is definitely higher than elementary school. Definitely.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, m'dear!

[lily-the-hobbit.livejournal.com]

Mine should be better than yours? MINE? Honestly?

Mine's genius. :p

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Genius!? Hmm. Been posting in Gaelic?

*grin*

[lily-the-hobbit.livejournal.com]

the odd word here and there, yes... :p

[mariole.livejournal.com]

I got the same. Perhaps it's all the comments. So many people write little quickie replies. Who knows?

Normally my professional writing comes in at college level, which is bad. My audience should target no higher than 10th grade.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I'd probably really enjoy your professional writing then. I get very tired of simplistic prose.

[mariole.livejournal.com]

I had an officemate. He tried to write our books at a simple level. Our guidelines told us to. He used short sentences. They all had to be short like this. That's because if you said "administration computer" it had lots of syllables (rats, "syllable" is another one). It can't be over 2 syllables. Ooh! See how hard that is to do? So he wrote his whole book like that. (We get bored in technical writing. See that word? "Technical?")

His final score was 4th grade. I hope you don't write like this. We were falling down laughing. If you wrote like that, we would be falling down crying. Really-- no one can write like this. So you may revert to your sophisticated prosage at any time. Cheers!

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

Is elementary school the first one you go to? (I should really know this) If so, that's just downright wrong.

Anyway, it can't be right because that's the same as what I got and you're far better at composing complex and elegant sentences than I.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Yup. Ironic, isn't it? Maybe all this working with children is getting to me.

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

The youth is contagious!

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I scored as junior high. Can't imagine why!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! (I shall now go off and whine softly...)

[shirebound]

No way!

That's what I got, too. :O

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think it must only sample the first few lines of the given page. Makes me want to post something dreadfully erudite and magniloquent to test the theory.

[mariole.livejournal.com]

I dare you to say that to my face!!!

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Hm. No, your blog doesn't come across at that level at all. Which makes my result puzzle me all the more:

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Well at least I have brilliant friends!

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

The fanfic only got high school. *shrugs*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

The fanfic wasn't talking about topical hemowhatsises. *grin*

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

True enough. :)

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Elementary School? Your LJ? Nope. (I got the same result, btw. It's probably poor German gal trying to write engklish what makes my journal so simplistic).

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think it's that the algorithm only goes down a few entries. I tried the "butter bath" entry by itself and got High School.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

LOL it said mine rated as high school (I hated high school). That said, I think this test in cracked!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think it's a ploy to get the google rating for the credit website higher, myself, but I am still mildly amused by the results people are getting.

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

I got junior high. Seems about right. Why use a five-dollar word when a five-cent word will do? The blog hosting the tool got "elementary school" too, so whatever algorithm he's using (if it's not just random), I don't think the designer would understand an "elementary school" level as an insult.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

But I like five dollar words!

I delight in the prolix profundities of a magniloquent muse! I prefer to be querulous instead of cranky, verbose instead of wordy, rambunctious instead of hyper!

You use five dollar words over nickel terminology for the same reason that you buy twenty dollar steaks instead of dollarmenu cheeseburgers, or that people walk around wearing thirty dollar t-shirts. Because you can afford the more expensive (or expansive) vocabulary.

If you've got it, flaunt it!

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Hee! But this --

I delight in the prolix profundities of a magniloquent muse!

-- doesn't sound like you. You sound like a good writer, not like a thirteen- year-old who just discovered her thesaurus. You use five-dollar words on occasion, but only when they're appropriate both to your meaning and to your audience. And I very much doubt whether a simple blog-based algorithm -- one that takes about a second to run and that's being used to advertise cash advance loans -- is sophisticated enough to test for grace, beauty, accuracy, or rhetorical efficacy.

To put it another way, people who can afford to buy twenty-dollar steaks don't eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They eat them when they feel like steak.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Actually, that does sound like me. The thirteen year old I was wasn't nearly so likely to abuse the alliteratives in such a blatant fashion. But I like to play with my toys.

The meme is clearly inadequate. The algorithm doesn't scan down very far, obviously, since my bathtub entry (which wasn't behind a lj-cut) came up as high-school, and you'd think that a test of this sort would opt for the highest level of difficulty.

I think, it must be confessed, that my back gets up when people talk about using nickel words as if it were always preferable to using the "expensive" stuff. Because I work with children, I am painfully aware of how repeated exposures to a word are necessary for it to become a part of a functional vocabulary. Because I work with children who don't like to read "hard books", as well as children who do, I can see the difference that reading level makes on the readers over time.

And of course, I have my own experience as a young teenager. I read Sherlock Holmes gleefully, without encouragement from any adult I knew, which means I did it without a dictionary at my elbow. In A Study in Scarlet, Watson first reads one of Holmes' opinions on detection and cries "Poppycock!" throwing his egg spoon down with alacrity. Now, I didn't know what an egg spoon was, but I could guess, and I didn't know what alacrity was either, but I knew what "poppycock" was, so I guessed that "alacrity" meant something like "disgust" and kept reading.

Now I may have hit "alacrity" a few more times, but it wasn't until I was reading "Amok Time" in the James Blish short story adaptations of the original Trek shows that I questioned my guess. After the battle, when Spock wants to go down to Sick Bay and see how his father is doing, Kirk gives him permission and he leaves with something very much like alacrity.

That's when I hit the dictionary. Three years at least after the first time I saw the word. But what if James Blish had decided to use nickel words? He could have just written "cheerful briskness". It would have meant the same thing. And I could still be putzing along with a completely upside-down idea of what "alacrity" means.

Use words. Use lots of words. Use big words! Use unusual words!! Do your readers a favor!

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I reckon that the simplest word which is suitable sometimes IS the ten dollar one.

The site reckoned that my blog is high school reading level - which I assume is the school age range 11 to 18?