My poetry is much more complex than Leanne's

[rayheinrich]

Interesting how it works out what a sentence is. I just pasted the first section of Ginsberg's 'Howl' and it said that it had 10 sentences and gave it a Gunning-Fog score of 90.4
However it has 10 full stops and only one sentence so I took out the 9 offending full stops that were used in abbreviations such as F.B.I. and then it gave it a Gunning-Fog score of 859.9
Inserting those 9 full stops back into any random place in the poem took the score right back to 90.4 again.

Yeah, I just took one of my poems and put "." at the end of stanzas.

Without "." I got a Gunning Fog index of: 35.58 years of schooling.

After putting the "." in I got a Gunning Fog index of: 3.75 years.
This might explain why some of the critiques I get are written in crayon.

For anybody wanting to play with this, one of the 15 or so places you can do it
on the web is here: Readability Calculator

It tells you quite a few other statistics and gives you a list of the sentences that are in need of improvement.
Here's what it says about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

Number of characters (without spaces) : 1,149.00
Number of words : 272.00
Number of sentences : 10.00
Average number of characters per word : 4.22
Average number of syllables per word : 1.38
Average number of words per sentence: 27.20

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading:
Gunning Fog index : 13.38 years

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index : 7.98
Flesch Kincaid Grade level : 11.24
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 12.07
SMOG : 11.49

Flesch Reading Ease : 62.90

List of sentences which we suggest you should consider to rewrite to improve readability of the text :

   It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
   Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
   It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
   Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.