Senator Reid: Sixth-Grade Writing Level

Oh, our wonderful readers:

Kevin/Greg:
I cut and paste the applicable Justice Thomas writing example you gave into MS Word and under Tools/Spelling Grammar menu option, ran the checker.
It gave Fleisch-Kincaid Grade Level as 21.7 and Reading Ease as 16.4, both hardly close at all to 8th grade reading level. [0% passive sentences. Not bad.]
OK, let’s cut and paste something from Mr. Reid:
“Oh sure, that’s easy to do. You take the Hillside Dairy case. In that case you had a dissent written by Scalia and a dissent written by Thomas. There-it’s like looking at an eighth-grade dissertation compared to somebody who just graduated from Harvard. Scalia’s is well reasoned.

He doesn’t want to turn stare decisis precedent on its head. That’s what Thomas wants to do. So yes, I think he has written a very poor opinion there and he’s written other opinions that are not very good.”
Fleisch-Kincaid Grade Level: 6.0

Reading Ease: 71.3

Passive sentences: 12%
Interesting.