Raconteur Press’s editor has a channel on their discord server named, appropriately enough, “red ink and drink.” It’s there for her to rant about common and uncommon errors, in not entirely sober tones, as she works her way through 24 anthologies in 2024. Copyediting, L-rd knows, would be enough to drive me to drink. I have enough problems with realizing the voice of a book is sliding toward pluperfect subjunctive in chapters, much less trying to nitpick anyone else.
(Readers have opinions about first person vs. third person. They don’t, by en large, have opinions about the most nitpicky of grammar rules… but they do have a sense for when something isn’t right. The point of an excellent copyedit to is prevent that sense from separating a reader from the story.)
One of the things that came up in discussion, though, was even more of a hot-button topic than which punctuation falls where, in conjunction with quotation marks (I pled a mixed Queen’s English / American household, and bowed out of that fight)… It was reading level.
By which I do not mean as how my stories are half a bubble off plumb. I mean the level of literacy required to read a story, as measured in grade levels. The “average American” has a reading level of 7-8th grade. However, average is a statistical level, and measuring another way finds between 40-50% of American read below a sixth-grade level (Depends on which study you look at.)
There are at least two sides to the argument, and both are equally valid (see Kipling: nine and sixty ways of conducting tribal lays, and every single one is right.)
The first view is that intentionally writing / editing to a lower grade level will drastically widen your audience. This is true – if you make it readable to people who rarely pick up a book, then when they pick up your book, they won’t have to strain to read it, nor will they find the effort getting between them and the story. I noticed this when a couple of literati types picked up a James Patterson novel, and were proceeding to mock it for its simple language: what they viewed as terribly limited and simplistic vocabulary and called a mark of shame, I instead argued was a boon to the tired travellers in the airport shops, and the general reading and often non-reading public. You never hear people saying “He was too hard to read” or “used too many big words.”
J.K. Rowling, I will note to you, writes primarily at the fifth-grade level… and was accessible enough that she’s sold over 600 million copies of Harry Potter books. (I have very fond feelings toward that woman; she’s done more for literacy, especially for overcoming the anti-reading bias beaten in by public school, and the constant bleat about how children can’t handle length or large casts of characters or what have you, than most anyone else in the last 20 years. I have personally met a man who learned how to read as an adult on Harry Potter, and went on to be a literacy teacher.)
The second view is that, after we leave primary school and its vocabulary lists behind, we learn new words through exposure and context… so if we want people to become more literate, we must create stories interesting enough to be worth reading, with the vocabulary and concepts to enrich their minds and lives.
Michael Crichton, most famously with Jurassic Park, introduced chaos theory, and genetic engineering, and a bunch of dinosaur terms to the public. Tom Clancy taught (and mis-taught) the public a whole boatload of technical terms and subjects.
Like many things, the more you read, the better you’re likely to get at reading. So if we challenge our readers, in ways that are fun and entertaining, then we’re incidentally helping them grow.
…important caveat. It’s great to throw in unfamiliar terms, but make sure you provide enough context that the reader can figure it out if they don’t know it. I’ve learned a number of new words from reading – who is the geek that hasn’t mispronounced a word because they’d never heard it, only read it? However, I still remember the intense frustration, in the days before the internet was widespread and easily accessible, of playing the Return To The Temple Of Elemental Evil, and a table full of gamers all stopping and searching the apartment (in vain) for a dictionary, because none of us knew what “vermiculated” walls were, and we were all certain it was going to bite us if we ignored it.
Where do you plan to fall, or do you fail to plan? Is it something that changes story by story?
Mad Genius Club 
25 responses to “Reading level”
“Temple Of Elemental Evil”
And a textbook example of filing off serial numbers with a lick and a promise at best is Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion series. I don’t care how many times she denies it, her “Brewersbridge” in Vol 2 Divided Allegiance, both people and buildings, are the village of Hommlet and environs.
And St Gird and Saint Cuthbert of the cudgel are “brothers from another mother”.
Years ago when I was a technical lead on a project, my manager took me aside and told me some of our ESL people said I used too many big words. I asked if he was accusing me of erudition. After a few moments’ thought, he allowed that he was.
It’s the EFL ones who complain that you use words they don’t know that get me. How am I supposed to know what words they don’t know?
Worm like? Those undulating walls?
In the real world, it would probably be “carved in a complicated series of ornamental grooves:” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiculation
But D&D was known to reinterpret a term or two.
Ah.
Reinterpreted to mean “covered in worms” or, worse, “covered in snakes”?
It also can mean “worm-eaten,” a natural way of creating more or less the same pattern.
I have to admit that I haven’t the faintest idea what grade level I write at.
I learned vocabulary mostly from reading books. If that worked for me from the time I was big enough to hold one, it will work for other people. No point of making a practice of obscurity just to revel in it, but the right word is the right word, and accuracy is accuracy.
I may provide a clue for a reader if it occurs to me, but it’s an unusual month when I notice. The only thing I pay attention to is if it’s a word the character would use. If so, then the reader should handle it. If not, the characters on the page can be puzzled, too, and seek enlightenment.
That’s what dictionaries are for (as generations of Grade School teachers have insisted). I remember, with delight, the first time I encountered particular unfamiliar words (e.g., “deal” as the British term for ordinary furniture wood boards (typically pine), from a Nevil Shute). It was delightful to get a sudden vivid sense of the Brits (esp. the non-elites) as a truly separate people. It made me realize I might not fully understand the personalities, either, making the “different time/place” aspect obvious.
More to the point than vocabulary, I think, is natural speech (vernacular) vs high-status speech. The educated use different forms and expressions in many speech (not just written) contexts (part of their status markers), and all groups have functional slang. Your typical variegated band of heroes is unlikely to all speak in the same registers, whether it’s (formal) grammar or vocabulary choices, much less pronunciation. A little of this goes a long way on the written page, but it’s also a fruitful field for intra-personnel humor as well as characterization.
Oh, yes. A major struggle for me is just this issue. I’m constantly picking away at dialogue to stop the characters from sounding like… me.
I had an excellent English teacher in high school. But I’m realizing that she planted land mines in my head that go off whenever an “ungrammatical” phrase is encountered in my reading. I pick up on everything. (This can be good – as in, amusingly, encountering “to is” in the second paragraph. Those are easy for me to fix even when I’m being my own copy editor.)
I remember reading a blog post about how Tolkien used register change in Lord of the Rings. It was interesting.
Oh boy. This is one I hadn’t thought about before. I know I try to match the language to the character and his point of view. I know I get rid of so-called formal words and replace them with regular words (never been a fan of “utilize” when “use” works). That’s mostly for aesthetics and not wanting to sound stuffy.
But I think I’ve been assuming that people who read books know more words than people who don’t, and that’s it’s not an issue.
“Stuffy,” I think, depends on the character you are depicting. For instance, I’ve been reading the Chaney/Maggert “Backyard Starship” series in recent days – and one character just would not be the same if he were not “stuffy.” (The one named “Funboy” – or “Cheerful Enthusiast” in literal translation.)
But, of course!
However, I still remember the intense frustration, in the days before the internet was widespread and easily accessible, of playing the Return To The Temple Of Elemental Evil, and a table full of gamers all stopping and searching the apartment (in vain) for a dictionary, because none of us knew what “vermiculated” walls were, and we were all certain it was going to bite us if we ignored it.
Though, to be fair, now that the internet is a thing, it’s pretty easy to look up one or two unknown words. For those who use e-readers, it’s trivial, but even a stubborn luddite like me can put down the paper book and look something up on my phone. Best one I’ve found recently was a story that turned on a “chryselephantine” sculpture; that definitely required a look-up (it’s a style of ancient Greek sculpture made from gold and ivory for those who are curious.)
That said, I don’t think you should go around using the big words just to show how smart you are. Use them when they’re necessary, but don’t force them into the writing. As the old saw goes, never use a word of excessive length when a diminutive one will do!
And as always, eschew obfuscation!
That always sounds like a rather disgusting eating habit to me. Even though I know what it means!
Eschew Obfuscation?
I use the words that work and are correct (or as much so as I can).
Since my sci-fi world involves a world-wide mixed-up diaspora on the other side of the meatgrinder of history, I also use furrin words as appropriate, made-up words, and names from every which where.
And I put little hats and shoes on some of my vowels, again to indicate what a culture might become on the other side of the meatgrinder of history.
I do try — very hard — to make it clear from the text what an unusual term means.
And after that, well, there’s the dictionary.
Long words? It depends on the books and the characters. Some series (the Merchant stories) demand a more formal language, with longer terms, or not longer but more technically precise. Others have some characters who are more formal in their speech, while others tend to be less formal – unless they are deliberately switching speech modes. Lelia Lestrang and her husband tend to speak “normal American,” unless they are going full-on glamor goth, or are talking to Arthur. Jude Tainuit tends to be more formal, in part as a barrier between himself and others. I always try to have enough context that readers can get the meaning of the word.
And I freely admit, I love tossing in fun older archaic words. How often do you get to use “beshrew” and “calumniate” in everyday speech? (Both of which mean to speak badly of or to someone or something.)
I ignore reading level, in other words.
As a reader, I enjoy it when an author can so define a characters’ voice that I can identify the character, with no other indications, from their speech alone.
One of the ways I browse books is to open one to a random middle page, and read ten pages.
If after that, I can identify the main character, what kind of a person the main character is, what type of story it is, and why I should care what happens next, I will usually buy the book.
Slowly working my way through a rather old novel from around 1820 for research and it is not an easy read. Not sure exactly what about it is grinding. It may be a combination of the vocabulary, the difference in speaking, or just the completely different pacing, but it is not feeling like something I’d just grab for fun.
Ok, 17% in and things are finally moving. I think the problem is the first four chapters of the book are filled with the blockhead family entertaining the guest and the peddler.
It isn’t until the Continental Army shows up that more than two competent characters appear, and up until then, the stranger had been mostly keeping his mouth shut and listening and the peddler had been doing a good job of appearing to be a nobody of note.
Reading Jack Vance always has me pulling out the dictionary between his use of archaic words and his made-up terms.