Statistical Analysis of Stand-Alone LitE Stories

[oggbashan]

I expect that Ogg was equating "better" with "lower grade level." That's what I'd do, anyway.

You are right. A lower grade level on F-K means a more accessible story.

While most readers of erotica have a reasonable understanding of written English (otherwise they'd be watching erotic video, not reading!) we should remember that for many visitors to Literotica, English is not their native language. Simple English is easier to read if it is your second, third etc. language.

 

[davybyrne]

I expect that Ogg was equating "better" with "lower grade level." That's what I'd do, anyway.

Agreed, although it is counterintuitive that lower is better when talking about grades!

It still feels funny that a 6th grade level is what we should target for writing level, at least according to F-K! I may have to write a "See Jane Fuck" 1st grade level story to really test the correlation...

 

[8letters]

Agreed, although it is counterintuitive that lower is better when talking about grades!

It still feels funny that a 6th grade level is what we should target for writing level, at least according to F-K! I may have to write a "See Jane Fuck" 1st grade level story to really test the correlation...

Again, F-K is meant for non-fiction. I'd be a lot more meaningful to look at percentage of words that are in dialogue and F-K level for non-dialogue sections of the story. But I don't know how to get that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Again, F-K is meant for non-fiction. I'd be a lot more meaningful to look at percentage of words that are in dialogue and F-K level for non-dialogue sections of the story. But I don't know how to get that.

Agree. If F-K is meant to assess readability in a non-fiction context, seems to me it's a moot point worrying about it here.

But dumbing down to the lowest common denominator? It's not something I'll be doing anytime soon, and I don't think it's something my followers would want to see, either.

 

[NotWise]

It still feels funny that a 6th grade level is what we should target for writing level, at least according to F-K! I may have to write a "See Jane Fuck" 1st grade level story to really test the correlation...

I don't know that a 6th grade Flesch-Kincaid score is that much of a target. Hemingway wrote at a 4th grade level. Also, I compared F-K scores on several stories with 8letters, and my results came out consistently lower than his. We did both catch the same trends.

Dialog normally does lower the Flesch-Kincaid score. Bad grammar and punctuation can create havoc in the results.

 

[mfan2112]

I wonder if the analysis were done today if the results would be any different. COVID has brought out a lot of new readers and new writers (like me).

I am curious to see how scores and length vary based upon how many published pieces the author has at the time of publishing.

I would love to get access to the database and run some analytical queries on it.

 

[8letters]

I wonder if the analysis were done today if the results would be any different. COVID has brought out a lot of new readers and new writers (like me).

I am curious to see how scores and length vary based upon how many published pieces the author has at the time of publishing.

I would love to get access to the database and run some analytical queries on it.

The LitE database or the database I created?

I occasionally think about doing another analysis. I didn't like the F-K data. I'm thinking of doing something like the F-K of the paragraphs without dialogue and a percent dialogue of the story. Also, how many words until the first line dialogue.

 

[oggbashan]

I expect that Ogg was equating "better" with "lower grade level." That's what I'd do, anyway.

Yes. The lower the F-K level the more accessible the story is, particualrly to those whose native lanmguage is not English.

My https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/breathless-stargazing story is off the top of the F-K scale.

 

[mfan2112]

The LitE database or the database I created?

I occasionally think about doing another analysis. I didn't like the F-K data. I'm thinking of doing something like the F-K of the paragraphs without dialogue and a percent dialogue of the story. Also, how many words until the first line dialogue.

I would love access to the actual LitE DB. I know it is just fantasy and that would not really happen, nor probably should it happen. But I work with databases a lot in my day job and I like to play with data like this. Asking the data the type of questions you are. But I most likely would not go down the F-K analysis that you do.

I also wonder if the new board format of top 10 instead top 25 makes a difference in the data.

Ok, now back to everyone's regular programming, and ignore my ramblings. I'm going to go work on my story project now...

 

[NotWise]

My https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/breathless-stargazing story is off the top of the F-K scale.

My employer regularly breaks the scale on the F-K rating. A couple decades ago one of our clients led a revolt among staff because his reports were unreadable. As his regular editor I still have to enforce the reading level. Multisyllabic technical terms are sometimes unavoidable, but 50-word sentences are usually unnecessary.