44 | June• 2018

HAVE BESTSELLERS BECOME DUMBER?

soundoutwordsratherthanhaving

tomemorisethem.Healsohelpedto

create a mathematical formula, the

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test, to

measure the complexity of US mili-

tary training manuals. It and similar

testsarenowcommonlyappliedto

insurancepoliciesandotheroicial

documents, but it makes for a handy

literacyscaleaswell.

heformulaitselfisfairlysimple:

total words

total sentences

total syllables

0.39() + 11.8()total words – 15.59

The resulting score is the grade

levelrequiredtounderstandthetext.

If a book gets a 3, that means you’d

need at least a third-grade education

to understand it.

For instance,Green Eggs and Ham

actually yields a score of −1.1. On the

other end of the spectrum isAbsalom,

Absalom!Because William Faulkner

frequently disregards punctuation,

it contains one ‘sentence’ composed

of 1288 words, earning that passage a

grade-level score of 503.

As part of my research, I collected

every digitised number onehe New

York Times bestseller from 1960 to

Besides made-up words and

rhymes, Dr Seuss’s biggest trademark

is simple writing. We can partly thank

William Spaulding, his Houghton

Milin editor, who wanted Seuss to

go after an even younger audience

than he had reached with his first

books,HortonHearsaWho!,And

to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry

StreetandIfIRantheZoo. Spauld-

ing’s challenge: “Write me a story that

irst-graders can’t put down!”

Spauldingsentalongalistofabout

350wordswiththeinstructionsto

makeabookoutofthem.There-

sult,heCatintheHat,clocksinat

236wordsandranksasthesecond-

highest-selling book of Seuss’s career.

he book ahead of it?Green Eggs and

Ham,whichusesjust50words–all

butoneofthem,onesyllable.(The

long one:anywhere.)

Seuss’swordselectioncamefrom

lists created by readability experts

such as Rudolf Flesch, who argued in

his seminal 1955 bookWhy Johnny

Can’t Readthat literacy education in

theUSneededreform.ItwasFlesch

who introduced young readers to

phonics, which enabled students to

I

fyou’veeverreadaDrSeussbook,you

maybefamiliarwithwordssuchasFizza-

ma-Wizza-ma-Dill,Fifer-fefer-fefand

Tr u f u l a.Youmayalsobefamiliar with

these words:a, will, the.