20 January 2017

Trump’s speech was constructed simply

President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address was brief, just 1,455 words, and was written at an eighth grade level according to Flesh’s implementation of the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease formulas. Most recent inaugural speeches have received similar reading ease scores.

Applying the Flesch-Kincaid formula to Trump’s speech is a bit tricky given how the speech was punctuated. If colons and semicolons are treated as the end of a sentence, Trump’s grade level score is 7.9. But it’s 8.9 if colons and semicolons are not treated as ends of sentences.

His use of dashes to set off phrases complicates the analysis. Visually, the phrases set off by dashes function as sentences, but Flesh treats these phrases as parenthetical expressions that are part of a sentence. The result: a slightly inflated grade level score. Adjusting his grade level score to 7–8 probably makes sense.