Analysts: Sarah Palin Writes at an 8th-grade Level

The huge cache of Sarah Palin's emails released Friday offered not only a chance to see what she was writing about during her uncompleted term as Alaska's governor, but also an opportunity to see how well she writes.

AOL Weird News brought samples to two writing analysts who independently evaluated 24,000 pages of the former governor's emails. They came back in agreement that Palin composed her messages at an eighth-grade level, an excellent score for a chief executive, they said.

"I'm a centrist Democrat, and would have loved to support my hunch that Ms. Palin is illiterate," said 2tor Chief Executive Officer John Katzman.

"However, the emails say something else. Ms. Palin writes emails on her Blackberry at a grade level of 8.5."

http://weirdnews.aol.com/2011/06/13/sarah-palin-writing-level_n_874790.html

Apparently, corporate CEOs average even lower writing scores. Kinda/sorta/buevista makes you think that we're fucked, doesn't it? :(

We'd see the same results. Texting, email and IM has created a whole new sort of language.

I make it a point to write e-mails in the same way that I would write a letter. However, the vast majority of the people I correspond with don't bother. I find it jarring to read some of the e-mails written by people with whom I have had intelligent conversations in person and I have a personal pet peeve regarding e.e. cummings style e-mail writing. I'm convinced that the success I enjoy in terms of accomplishing things (i.e., with business and academic contacts) is due to the time I take in writing proper e-mails.

Didn't Einstein say "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

Of course, that would explain the behaviour of a lot of people around this office, but let's not go there.

Rather surprised she rates as high as she does.

Even the NY Times is at a 6th-grade level. Welcome to "Idiocracy". :dunce:

Fourth grade is the norm, so far as I know.

...hey, if Barak is still a Kenyan, let her prove she wrote them.

It sounds like she was a better communicator before the national GOP took over her and she became a faux news talking head. It's almost like the faux news life makes you stupid.

I think that is way too high...I think she only just recently graduated from crayon myself...

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It's something.

Ernest Hemingway's novels are at 4-5th grade level. He writes well. Written material that a 6th grader cannot comprehend is not well written, or is about a technical subject that requires subordinations and convolutions, or if you are James Joyce.

Word has a setting that will evaluate readability after a spell check. I recommend that student aim for 6th grade or lower {i]if they want people to read what they write.

Reading at a high grade level is desirable; writing not so much.

--imm

Hemingway has cooled from High School. In High School he was one of my favorite writers. I still think "The Old Man and the Sea" is a great piece of fiction. I can't say the same for "For Whom the Bell Tolls". While you have flashes of brilliance, the main characters, especially the woman María, drive me nuts now. I do love Sordo's last stand. Maybe I need to reread "The Sun Also Rises" to get a better reappreciation since that was the first Hemingway novel which I read.

I will go to my grave thinking James Joyce is the most overrated writer in history. My Honors English teacher was in love with him, but I never understood the attraction.

I have assigned a couple of essays to my 7th grader to write that compares and contrasts a popular recent piece of juvenile fiction with a classic. She almost has me convinced that "The Hunger Games" is superior to "Treasure Island".

Good point about writing for the masses. I think a middle school level for emails makes alot of sense. If you are well read and still need another book like a commentary to understand a piece written recently, then the writer is not doing a good job. Dense academic writing presupposes certain knowledge, but the best articles written for Scientific American for example should be able to be understood by anyone with a solid undergraduate education. I know my 7th grader really enjoys reading some of their articles.

not quite as bad as T.S. Eliot (who thoughtfully provides an owner's manual, itself a bit of a reach) but multiple re-readings reveal enriching textures and patterns.

I hated Pychon's Gravity's Rainbow until I heard Pink Floyd's The Wall and studied Jung's theories of synchronicity.

I bet your kid clocks in at a 12.something.

I have not even approached Joyce. But my ninth grade(!) English teacher, for our grammar final, had the class diagram a sentence, which I think was taken from Finnegan's Wake, that had 17 clauses!

The best wordsmith I have encountered is George Orwell. And the most powerful, word-for-word, is Alan Ginsburg.

I mostly read non-fiction these days. Love to read James Gleick. He wrote Chaos, a primer to understanding the universe, no less.

--imm

That's a pretty generous assessment.

The problem is the most common measures like SMOG are pretty much useless. By better-supported methods like fill-in-the-blank it's probably somewhat higher, especially since she does write about policy.

isn't it? Or don't they require English grammar and composition as a prerequisite for that degree anymore?

First of all, reading level scores don't mean much. It's rare to write anything above a certain reading level unless it's high-level academic writing.

Secondly, seeing as y'all think this says something about one's intelligence and overall worth as a person, I'm guessing people with learning disabilities (such as myself) are worth less than dirt to you. I guess I should never run for office because my math, visual memory, fine motor coordination and executive function scores are low.

There are a million things to criticize Sarah Palin for. This isn't one of them.

Edit to add I don't believe Palin writes at an 8th grade level. She's more at the preschool level.

:rofl:

I'm not so sure that most schools even stress writing comprehension much these days:(

"Although it's like comparing apples to oranges, Payack said that famous speeches like Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a 9.1 and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" oration rated a 8.8 on the scale."

...

So Sarah is in the advanced group. :)