"Cherry" > wrote in message
...
Surely that would depend on the authors' target readership. Eighth grade is
teenage level. I'm 56 years-old, I don't want books that read like they're
written for teenagers.
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> That is what newspapers are written at.
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readability

That's only the readability of newspapers from a study that was done in
1948. A few years later the readability level went up to 11th grade not
8th. However, reading and writing isn't just about newspapers and
magazines, it's about the wonderful world of books.

"In 1948, Bernard Feld did a study of every item and ad in the Birmingham
News of 20 November 1947. He divided the items into those above the
8th-grade level and those at the 8th grade or below. He chose the 8th-grade
breakpoint because that was the average reading level of adult readers. An
8th-grade text "will reach about 50 percent of all American grown-ups," he
wrote. Among the wire-service stories, the lower group got two-thirds more
readers, and among local stories, 75 percent more readers. Feld also
believed in drilling writers in Flesch's clear-writing principles.[54]
Both Rudolf Flesch and Robert Gunning worked extensively with newspapers and
the wire services in improving readability. Mainly through their efforts in
a few years, the readability of U.S. newspapers went from the 16th to the
11th-grade level, where it remains today."

Cherry

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Well when I was in high school we were cautioned to keep our writing at an
8th grade level and we were told then that's how newspapers were written.