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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44595
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44595
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'd reject the advice to write to a sixth grade level, **unless** you are writing for kids or young-adults. I've seen the stats on reading levels in the USA somewhere; they must be online. But as I recall, writing should be at about the 11th grade level.

For one, in Hemingway's time, education levels were lower and reading was a much more widespread entertainment; that simply is not true in the modern world, which is where you sell books. The adult **reading** audience is better educated. The less educated adults prefer visual and/or audio entertainment; not reading. They are watching TV or movies or videos online; so you don't really need to appeal to them. They aren't your paying audience. Stephen King sells an average of 6 million copies per novel. That is a small percentage of the worldwide potential audience. There are 250M adults in the USA alone; suggesting the total audience is less than 2.4%, and likely less than 1% of the first-world adult population. For mostly one genre, admittedly, but you also have to admit that any given book is in mostly one genre.

Frequent readers for entertainment is who you want to appeal to, and I'd guess their reading level is about 12th grade, just by exposure. As a professor myself, I do NOT think college increases vocabulary much anymore; other than specialized vocabulary for specific fields. There is much less emphasis for most majors on fundamental courses in the "liberal arts" vein; except for English and teaching majors.

This is by necessity and for convenience; scientific advancement in nearly all other fields has increased the amount of material one must learn to be proficient, cutting down on the electives and cultural kinds of courses that require reading advanced materials. And technological advancements mean much less must be committed to memory, than was once the case. A large vocabulary isn't necessary if you can just ask your phone for a word definition.

I certainly wouldn't want to make them look up words on every page, that would be interrupting their reading reverie. I'd be more willing to include an esoteric word in places where they could gather the meaning by inference, or just skip it.

But I also don't write at a 6th grade level; when I have checked a page using a tool, it says I write at the 11-12th grade level, and my adult readers do not complain.

Original score: 6