Do the Flesch-Kincaid

As a speaker, there are a couple numbers you should know.

One is your average WPM — how many words do you speak per minute (the average human speaks about 120-130 words per minute). You do that so when you are writing a speech, you know about how many words you have to express your idea (for example, “I speak about 120 wpm, and my speech is 5 minutes, so my speech needs to be about 600 words).

Another number you should be aware of is what grade level do you typically speak or write at? Can a university student understand your speech? A high schooler? A middle schooler?

Speaking only so highly-educated people can understand you is not necessarily something to be proud of. In his famous product keynote speeches, Steve Jobs spoke at a middle school level, and sometimes even lower.

How can you get “your number”? Do a Flesch-Kincaid test. They’re free and easy. Go to Google and type “Flesch-Kincaid test” — you’ll get a results page filled with free F-K calculators, like this one:

perrymarshall.com/grade

Copy/paste your text into the calculator, hit enter, and watch the score magically appear.

I love Flesch-Kincaid tests so much that sometimes I paste in a speech, just for fun…

I grabbed the transcript from one of my favorite speeches, a Ken Robinson TED speech, and checked it out. What did he get? 5.7. This is one of the best speeches ever, but even a 6th grader could understand it.

Then I grabbed a Wikipedia article on nuclear fusion. Its score? 13.5. Oh, no wonder my brain hurts! You’ve got to be a university student to understand this one!

Related Posts

Slides are a crutch

Slides are a crutch

It was the most important presentation of her life. Not just of HER life. Of the lives of every single one of the people who worked for her, too. After all, their jobs at her company were how they put food on the table to feed their children. But they weren't going to...

Don’t feed the monster

Don’t feed the monster

Don't feed the monster. Kill it. You don't need prettier slides. You don't need fancy animations or most of the bells and whistles that are built into PowerPoint. You probably don't need to spend hours and hours preparing, if you're already an expert on the subject....

You don’t need more noise

You don’t need more noise

Slides are noise. There are 30 million new slides made every day. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "You know what I need more of in my life? PowerPoint slides." What the world needs more of is the ability to take a one-hour idea and crush it down into 3 or 4...