In 1949, Flesch published the results of a 10-year study of the editorial content of several magazines. He found that:

  • About 45% of the population can read The Saturday Evening Post.
  • Nearly 50% of the population can read McCall's, Ladies Home Journal, and Woman's Home Companion.
  • Slightly over 50% can read American Magazine.
  • 80% of the population can read Modern Screen, Photoplay, and three confession magazines.

Flesch (1949, pp. 149-150) compared the reading scores of popular magazines with other variables:

Style Flesch Reading Ease Score Average Sentence Length in Words Average No. of Syll. Per 100 Words Type of Magazine Estimated School Grade Completed Estimated Percent of U.S. Adults
Very Easy 90 to 100 8 or less 123 or less Comics 4th grade 93
Easy 80 to 90 11 131 Pulp fiction 5th grade 91
Fairly Easy 70 to 80 14 139 Slick fiction 6th grade 88
Standard 60 to 70 17 147 Digests 7th or 8th grades 83
Fairly Difficult 50 to 60 21 155 Quality Some high school 54
Difficult 30 to 50 25 167 Academic High school or some college 33
Very Difficult 0 to 30 29 or more 192 or more Scientific College 4.5
Table 4. Flesch's 1949 analysis of the readability of adult reading materials.

Flesch's work had an enormous impact on journalism. Like Robert Gunning, who worked with the United Press, Flesch was a consultant with the Associated Press. Together, they helped to bring down the reading grade level of front-page stories from the 16th to the 11th grade, where they remain today.

graphic of picture of Edgar Dale
Fig. 7. Edgar Dale, a leading figure in communications, stressed the importance of vocabulary in assessing readability.

The Dale and Chall Original Formula Edgar Dale, for 25 years a professor of education at Ohio State University, was a respected authority on communications. He worked his whole life to improve the readability of books, pamphlets, and newsletters-the stuff of everyday reading.

Dale was one of the first critics of the Thorndike lists. He claimed it failed to measure the familiarity of words accurately. He subsequently developed new lists that were later used in readability formulas.

One of these was a formula he developed with Jeanne Chall, the founder and director for 20 years of the Harvard Reading Laboratory. She had led the battle for teaching early reading systematically with phonics. Her 1967 book Learning to Read: The Great Debate, brought research to the forefront of the debate. For many years, she also was the reading consultant for TV's Sesame Street and The Electric Company.