A FibOfAllFibs Guide to Finding Grade Levels in Word

AGuide
~to~
Finding Grade Levels in Microsoft Word
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This is a basic guide of how to figure out (relatively) what grade level your writing is at using Microsoft Word. In the screenshots, I will be using Word 2003, so it may not look the same for your version of Word.
Also, the grading in the traditional Microsoft Word for Windows program and in the Word for Macs program is different. The grading on Macs is on a 12-grade scale, while the grading on Windows is much higher (exactly what I'm not sure).

Step 1: In Microsoft Office Word, go to the top toolbar and click the drop-down menu "Tools." Then expand the options in the menu (the arrow) and click "Options.

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Step 2: Click the tab labled "Spelling and Grammar."

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Step 3: Check the box by the option that says "Show readability statistics."

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Step 4: Now, whenever you are in Word, you can press "F7" (or click the Spelling and Grammar tool) and it go through your document and run spell check like normal. Once the spellcheck is complete, it will show you something like this.

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This grade level should correspond to the current grade level you are in. For example, if you are in 10th grade, you should be writing things of a 10.0 grade level or higher. Known things that bump this grade higher are: big words (eg: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis), adverbs ending in -ly (eg: terrifically), and big numbers (eg: 1,987,374,342,324,249). Quotations are know to bump your grade lower, meaning that if you are writing a paper with quotations, it will say that your grade is lower than it actually is.

Thanks for reading my guide! I hope you found it imformative. If you have any commentary/things I could improve, please let me know and feel free to post. Thanks!​

 

Interesting Read , Never new that - But this is only for countrys that have 'Grades' In New Zealand we don't go by that standard so would NZ's version be any different?

 

Microsoft may have different versions depending on your locale.

Anyways, I didn't really think this would be a whole guide. But I guess it would work as its software specific and the other one is just a guide.

 

Sorry, I'm afraid I don't know. I guess I need to add that it's only for the US version.

 

Yeah, I would have added it to the other guide, but it seemed like this whole thing (with the pictures) would make too much of an interruption in the guide and make that section too long and ugly (like the SS section).