Monday, October 28, 2013

         In a Boston Baseball magazine, an article called, How To Use The Boston Baseball Scorecard, had an estimated reading age was 10 years old. Utilizing Fry's readability formula, a random one hundred word excerpt had only 124 syllables, with seven sentences. Plotting this on the Fry Graph For Estimating Reading Ages, I was able to find that the average reading age was ten. Also, this magazine in particular has a ratio of pages with ads to ad-free pages, of 43:25. This is astonishing because 43 of the pages have ads, while only 25 are ad free. This clearly shows that this magazine is geared towards making money more than providing the reader with an interesting story. This might also explain why the magazine has an average reading age of only 10. At my table, I had the magazine with the lowest reading age, while all four of the other kids had an estimated reading age of 15. This means that this magazine is open to a younger audience while the other magazines contain a far more complex vocabulary. A an average reader of this magazine may be about 10 to 15 years old male, interested in baseball, with any reading level that enjoys Boston sports.

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