How to lower your readability score: a practical editing playbook

"My Flesch–Kincaid is 14. My audience is grade 8. What do I do?"

You shorten sentences. You shorten words. But that advice is too vague to act on. This piece is the specific playbook — the moves that consistently drop a score by 2–4 grades without dumbing the text down or making it sound like a children's book.

First, understand what you're cutting

Every readability formula has two main inputs:

• Average sentence length (longer = harder)
• Word complexity (more syllables or letters = harder)

Both contribute. You can't ignore one and fix the other. A 30-word sentence of one-syllable words still scores high. A 6-word sentence of polysyllabic words also scores high. You need both levers.

The five highest-leverage edits

1. Find every sentence over 25 words and split it

This is the single biggest score mover. Long sentences disproportionately drag the average up because the formulas use mean length, not median.

Tools like our sentence length analyzer sort sentences by length so you can find the worst offenders. Even just splitting the longest 10% of sentences will usually drop your grade by a full level.

Where to split: look for "and", "but", "however", "which", ";", or any subordinate clause marker. Each is a natural seam.

Before: The system automatically rotates the encryption keys every 90 days, which ensures that even if a key is compromised, the exposure window is bounded, although administrators can override this interval if their security policy requires it.

After: The system rotates encryption keys every 90 days. Even a compromised key has a bounded exposure window. Administrators can override the interval if their security policy requires it.

Same information. Three sentences instead of one. Reads faster.

2. Replace Latinate verbs with Anglo-Saxon ones

English has two vocabulary layers: short Anglo-Saxon roots ("use", "help", "find") and long Latinate or Greek roots ("utilise", "facilitate", "ascertain"). The Anglo-Saxon set is shorter, more familiar, and lower-syllable.

Replacements that pay off:

• "utilise" → "use"
• "facilitate" → "help"
• "endeavour" → "try"
• "commence" → "start"
• "approximately" → "about"
• "consequently" → "so"
• "demonstrate" → "show"
• "sufficient" → "enough"
• "subsequently" → "then"
• "obtain" → "get"

A page sprinkled with these will lose 0.5–1 grade level just from the swaps. Your readers will not notice the loss; they will notice the gain in clarity.

3. Cut the "of" constructions

"The implementation of the policy" is six words and three syllables of overhead before you say anything. "Implementing the policy" is three words and avoids the noun-of-noun stack.

Other patterns:

• "a number of" → "many" or a specific number
• "in the event that" → "if"
• "due to the fact that" → "because"
• "in order to" → "to"
• "with the exception of" → "except"
• "the majority of" → "most"

Each cut shortens both sentence length and word complexity. They're free wins.

4. Strip throat-clearing phrases at the start of sentences

"It is important to note that..." adds six words to whatever follows. So do:

• "It should be noted that..."
• "What we found was that..."
• "There is a need to..."
• "In our experience..."

If the information matters, just say it. If it didn't matter, why is it in the sentence at all?

5. Prefer active voice — but don't be religious about it

Passive constructions tend to be longer ("The report was written by the team" vs. "The team wrote the report") and bury the actor. Our passive voice detector will flag them.

But: keep passives where the actor is genuinely unknown ("The lock was broken sometime overnight") or where you want emphasis on the object ("The bill was finally signed last Tuesday"). Mechanical passive-purging produces awkward writing.

Edits that look like they should help but don't

Removing "the"

Articles are zero-syllable noise in the formulas. Removing them does almost nothing to your score and makes prose sound robotic.

Replacing all polysyllabic words

"Photosynthesis" doesn't have a shorter synonym. Trying to write around it produces 50-word paraphrases that are worse. Accept that some words are unavoidable; define them on first use if needed.

Adding bullet lists

Bullet lists confuse the sentence detector in many tools. Your apparent score may improve but the underlying complexity hasn't changed. Use bullets when they help the reader, not to game a number.

A realistic target

For most content aimed at a general adult audience, target:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 60–70
• Flesch–Kincaid Grade: 7–9
• Gunning Fog: 9–12
• SMOG (health content): 6–8

If your starting point is significantly above these ranges, expect to drop 2–4 grades with disciplined editing. Going from grade 14 to grade 6 in one pass usually means you've stripped out necessary nuance — back off to grade 8.

The order of operations

1. Run your text through a grade-level tool to get a baseline.
2. Use the sentence length analyzer to find sentences over 25 words.
3. Split those sentences. Re-score. You'll usually see 1–1.5 grades drop.
4. Scan for the Latinate verbs above and replace them where it doesn't change meaning.
5. Cut throat-clearing phrases.
6. Re-score. Iterate until you hit your target.

Don't aim for a particular number; aim for clarity. The score is a side effect of doing the editing right — not the goal.