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November 25, 2007

Reading Level

yankees suck

Since I did not go to college, does this mean I may not understand my own writing?

21 comments:

  1. I did that on my blog, and it gave me an genius level. Huh.

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  2. "Is this thing serious?"

    Do you mean is it really measuring the language of a blog? Yes. It seems to be using reading levels as calibrated in the US.

    USA Today (and most local newspapers) are written at a 4th grade level.

    Newsday is 8th grade.

    New York Times is college level.

    In the US, literacy usually means 4th grade level. Even with that standard, millions of American adults are illiterate.

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  3. This seems kind of silly because it gave my blog the Genius rating, and I have many grammatical mistakes. I don't think this really means anything.

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  4. resign vs. re-sign

    Yes, a problem I am still pondering. How can resign mean the opposite of re-sign? Going off to do some word root research.

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  5. Hmmm...I ran this through both my blogs. My red sox blog got "elementary level" my writing blog got "genius level". What does this mean? Do I "dumb" down when I talk about the sox? Or do I just get smarter when I'm talking about writing? I'm surprised I got anything past "baby" level considering my spelling and grammatical errors on both my blogs.

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  6. In the US, literacy usually means 4th grade level. Even with that standard, millions of American adults are illiterate.

    I humbly request you stop reminding me of my nation's education level and reducing me to tears.

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  7. I also got "genius" - and I have ONE post on the blog i checked!

    I think it just measures the number of letters to words or something, and does a basic spell check...haha, whatever.

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  8. "How can resign mean the opposite of re-sign?"

    Because the original latin stem "re" means "back" So in this case, resign is to "sign back" or un-sign. I think it's only recently that "re" has come to mean "again." -Jan

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  9. Hmm... I tried it on a blog that I rarely understand, and it said junior high school, so I'm not sure about this one.

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  10. Thanks, Jan. It does seem that "re" has two meanings in Latin---again and back---so both meanings have been around for a long time. It sure makes for confusion in certain contexts.

    Another example: recover and re-cover. The former means to get back, the latter to cover again. Fascinating stuff, etymology.

    See why you got the college level rating, Allan?

    (I still remember my first post on the blog relating to whether the Herald had intentionally or mistakenly used an incorrect apostrophe in its headline reading, "First thing's first." How could I resist a sports blog that worried about punctuation?)

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  11. You first posted on that one? Cool.

    I see it again in your comment -- and it annoys me.

    Or is that annoy's?

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  12. Stop that RS you are bringing down the forum grade level

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  13. OK, it looks like the "test" is b/s.

    I humbly request you stop reminding me of my nation's education level and reducing me to tears.

    Oh, sorry about that. At least it's worth crying over.

    Jan and Amy, thanks for the etymology lessons, great stuff. I read Samuel Pepys's Diary online (we love the internet!) and so many words Pepys uses now mean the exact opposite of what they did in his era.

    People who are not good spellers would have enjoyed writing more in those days. Spelling had not yet been standardized. The few people -who could write spelled words however they wanted.

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  14. Stop that RS you are bringing down the forum grade level

    From now on this can be the standard argumentative response on JoS. For example:

    [Post:] Dude sign the Rockett even for part of the season he will be usch a good mentor for the young playaz & think about it he wont get as much money as he did with the Yankees last yer lol Yankees suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

    [Response:] You are bringing down the forum grade level.

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  15. From now on this can be the standard argumentative response on JoS. . . .
    [Response:] You are bringing down the forum grade level.


    Yes! In fact, we can go one step further, into acronym land. YABDTFGL? Don't BDTFGL? Hey stop, BDTFGL? BDTFGL alert?

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  16. Of course BDTFGL shouldn't apply to gamethreads, where we are all in kindergarten.

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