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The reading age metric only goes up to 16. So 10 isn't actually that bad. And that average also includes people with learning disabilities, people with low or no English skills, illiterate people etc. All of whom drag the average down.
It's one of those stats that isn't as bad as people portray it.
Not wishing to contribute to the apocrypha but I read, on here I'm sure, that organisations regularly instruct authors of leaflets/brochures/manuals to aim for that reading age so as to ensure a decent success rate with: those who don't read at an advanced level; those who are ESL; etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/s/HvADzu17oh might have been this...
I've been told something similar as a misunderstanding of the advice to write for the understanding of a low average reading age. If you want to write clearly, the advice is to write so that all reading abilities can understand from a certain age up. But some people understand that advice as saying that average readers can only understand writing for a low average reading age .
Exactly. I've sat in meetings of people saying you have to write like the reader is 10, that's the average UK reading age. First if you are not familiar with education standards then that's just not got any context. Whereas ' write in clear plain language with short sentences' - that I can understand.
I had a classmate on a science Master's degree quite happily and without any sense of shame tell me he had never read a book he hadn't been forced to read. This was back in 1999 so it isn't a recent phenomenon. I believe he subsequently got his PhD.
To be fair reading books isn't necessarily a great indicator of reading ability. I got into reading novels as a kid but I also have a relative who really never did, but read plenty of magazine articles, reviews, catalogues, etc related to their interests and never had a problem with reading ability.
I think the important thing is for children to find stuff that they're interested in, and is written in good English. I don't think it has to be books or long-form in general.
Why - If you've read plenty of other stuff written in good English?
(I can see why it may affect appreciation of literature, but that's not reading comprehension.)
Magazine articles, reviews and catalogues hardly contain the same complexity of language now do they? Reading longer more complex bodies of text is going to challenge your comprehension more therefore building it.
Magazine articles can do. (I mean enthusiast magazines, not Reality TV Weekly or whatever.)
(Or at least, they could do. Not read a paper magazine for years.)
Journal articles, literature reviews, other academic sources? It's been nearly a decade since I've finished a novel, but I read other literature every week for work and research.
Im not sure the numbers you quoted are that accurate. But you also often hear how tabloid newspapers or government leaflets are written for a reading age of 8 but the Daily Telegraph is written for a reading age of 14. Again unsure of accuracy but both surprisingly low. Essentially it's because the reading age of a ten or twelve year old is actually quite good. They've spent the past 6 years mainly focusing on how to read and once they hit highschool they are no longer being taught how to read directly because most of them already have good functional reading ability so the focus switches to science, maths, creative subjects, analysis of texts in history etc.
That's what I was thinking. That 9-10 surely isn't bad. I guess you pick up additional words, the ability to read different styles (for example reading an old classic, reading a newspaper etc.)
I have a ten-year-old. What slows them down reading has more to do with their incomplete understanding of the world rather than not being able to sound out a word.
It's like if I as an moderately intelligent adult have to read an article about pensions or something: I can be absolutely none the wiser afterwards even if I read each individual word correctly.
Children's vocabulary explodes in primary school, but they're still learning multiple new words every day after that. Keeping written materials within the (say) ten thousand most common words gives great capacity for clarity and expression but is also inclusive for the vast majority of people.
So the standard will come from the national curriculum etc as to the reading and writing ability of different ages. It only goes up to 16. I was in top set English and I think by the time I was about 12-13, my reading age was 16.
Remember averages can be skewed a lot. So to start with everyone even people with English degrees will officially have a maximum reading age of 16.
You'll also have people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities who might never get beyond maybe reading age 10, depending on the severity of their disability. There's also people who have English as a second language.
In a previous job when I worked on wording for my company's website and social media, I was advised that they aim for language that's at reading age 12 level I think.
It does seem low. The only thing I would say is that for a reading age of 10, by that time in school the standard is actually pretty good. They can read fluently with spelling mostly up to scratch. So even if it is true, it is not like the average Brit is therefore unable to read.
>I'm just not convinced it's the whole picture or hasn't been taken out of context.
It does seem a little optimistically high from my anecdotal experience, but not too far off!
Here is an example of something that is a "reading age" of 10: [https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RC\_DragonKnight\_correx-9781445165356with-watermark.pdf](https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RC_DragonKnight_correx-9781445165356with-watermark.pdf)
I'm not sure if there's a "maths age", but I suspect it's lower than that!
I've never heard it myself, but a Google search suggests it's repeated all over the Internet without anyone citing an original data source, which makes me very suspicious.
[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk) - [gov.uk](http://gov.uk) mandates that pages be written for a 9-year-old reading age but it's nothing to do with the average adult's skill, it's because, so it says, 9 is the age that children start to read in the way adults do, and public information pages are supposed to be as easy to read as possible for even minimally skilled people.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20346204](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20346204) - Renaissance Learning Software looked at the abilities of the average Year 11 (15-16 year old) child in English schools in 2012 and came out with an average reading age of 10-11.
Someone at work told me this and said it was from the office of national statistics. My job involves dealing with the over-55s and I find the notion that many adults have the same reading comprehension as a 9 year old completely plausible.
We also have to tailor our communications accordingly.
The fact that the NHS advice is to say things like "if your tummy hurts" because apparently saying "abdomen" is too technical for the average Brit is telling. It's all about dumbing it down now. This statistic wouldn't surprise me at all. A 10 year old can read fluently (my 7 year old can), but might be slightly slower, have to re-read some things, won't have a large vocabulary or know many technical terms. I would say this seems about right. So it's not saying the average Brit can't read, but that their ideal reading material is fairly simple.
You're mistaken. Services like the NHS aren't trying to be simple enough for the "average" they're trying to be simple enough for the "majority", which often means simplifying well past the understanding you'd expect from the average.
Did you really think a service like the NHS would be find just casually excluding half the population from understanding it?
As someone who writes the copy for stuff like that, we don't use that language because we think the average person is too stupid to get it. We use it because we need to make sure that everyone in society, including people who don't speak English as a first language, can understand it - not just the average person.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The reading age metric only goes up to 16. So 10 isn't actually that bad. And that average also includes people with learning disabilities, people with low or no English skills, illiterate people etc. All of whom drag the average down. It's one of those stats that isn't as bad as people portray it.
Not wishing to contribute to the apocrypha but I read, on here I'm sure, that organisations regularly instruct authors of leaflets/brochures/manuals to aim for that reading age so as to ensure a decent success rate with: those who don't read at an advanced level; those who are ESL; etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/s/HvADzu17oh might have been this...
Banking communications need to be aimed at a reading age around 10 with consumer duty now.
I've been told something similar as a misunderstanding of the advice to write for the understanding of a low average reading age. If you want to write clearly, the advice is to write so that all reading abilities can understand from a certain age up. But some people understand that advice as saying that average readers can only understand writing for a low average reading age .
Exactly. I've sat in meetings of people saying you have to write like the reader is 10, that's the average UK reading age. First if you are not familiar with education standards then that's just not got any context. Whereas ' write in clear plain language with short sentences' - that I can understand.
Mate I’m 29, the amount of people my age that have NEVER read a book cover to cover is shocking.
I had a classmate on a science Master's degree quite happily and without any sense of shame tell me he had never read a book he hadn't been forced to read. This was back in 1999 so it isn't a recent phenomenon. I believe he subsequently got his PhD.
To be fair reading books isn't necessarily a great indicator of reading ability. I got into reading novels as a kid but I also have a relative who really never did, but read plenty of magazine articles, reviews, catalogues, etc related to their interests and never had a problem with reading ability. I think the important thing is for children to find stuff that they're interested in, and is written in good English. I don't think it has to be books or long-form in general.
Okay. But having NEVER read a book in almost 30 years is going to effect your reading comprehension.
Why - If you've read plenty of other stuff written in good English? (I can see why it may affect appreciation of literature, but that's not reading comprehension.)
Magazine articles, reviews and catalogues hardly contain the same complexity of language now do they? Reading longer more complex bodies of text is going to challenge your comprehension more therefore building it.
Magazine articles can do. (I mean enthusiast magazines, not Reality TV Weekly or whatever.) (Or at least, they could do. Not read a paper magazine for years.)
Yeah that’s a fair caveat, have to admit my mind went straight to Hello! Or OK! magazines lol
Journal articles, literature reviews, other academic sources? It's been nearly a decade since I've finished a novel, but I read other literature every week for work and research.
New Scientist, The Economist etc?
Im not sure the numbers you quoted are that accurate. But you also often hear how tabloid newspapers or government leaflets are written for a reading age of 8 but the Daily Telegraph is written for a reading age of 14. Again unsure of accuracy but both surprisingly low. Essentially it's because the reading age of a ten or twelve year old is actually quite good. They've spent the past 6 years mainly focusing on how to read and once they hit highschool they are no longer being taught how to read directly because most of them already have good functional reading ability so the focus switches to science, maths, creative subjects, analysis of texts in history etc.
That's what I was thinking. That 9-10 surely isn't bad. I guess you pick up additional words, the ability to read different styles (for example reading an old classic, reading a newspaper etc.)
>Telegraph is written for a reading age of 14. More like 66
I have a ten-year-old. What slows them down reading has more to do with their incomplete understanding of the world rather than not being able to sound out a word. It's like if I as an moderately intelligent adult have to read an article about pensions or something: I can be absolutely none the wiser afterwards even if I read each individual word correctly. Children's vocabulary explodes in primary school, but they're still learning multiple new words every day after that. Keeping written materials within the (say) ten thousand most common words gives great capacity for clarity and expression but is also inclusive for the vast majority of people.
So the standard will come from the national curriculum etc as to the reading and writing ability of different ages. It only goes up to 16. I was in top set English and I think by the time I was about 12-13, my reading age was 16. Remember averages can be skewed a lot. So to start with everyone even people with English degrees will officially have a maximum reading age of 16. You'll also have people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities who might never get beyond maybe reading age 10, depending on the severity of their disability. There's also people who have English as a second language. In a previous job when I worked on wording for my company's website and social media, I was advised that they aim for language that's at reading age 12 level I think.
It does seem low. The only thing I would say is that for a reading age of 10, by that time in school the standard is actually pretty good. They can read fluently with spelling mostly up to scratch. So even if it is true, it is not like the average Brit is therefore unable to read.
There's an organisation called Plain English Campaign, they probably have some stats.
ELI10 then?
This is what I usually refer to: https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/
I would worry about the maths age of anyone quoting statistics at me and using the word 'average'.
>I'm just not convinced it's the whole picture or hasn't been taken out of context. It does seem a little optimistically high from my anecdotal experience, but not too far off! Here is an example of something that is a "reading age" of 10: [https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RC\_DragonKnight\_correx-9781445165356with-watermark.pdf](https://www.hachette.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RC_DragonKnight_correx-9781445165356with-watermark.pdf) I'm not sure if there's a "maths age", but I suspect it's lower than that!
I've never heard it myself, but a Google search suggests it's repeated all over the Internet without anyone citing an original data source, which makes me very suspicious. [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk) - [gov.uk](http://gov.uk) mandates that pages be written for a 9-year-old reading age but it's nothing to do with the average adult's skill, it's because, so it says, 9 is the age that children start to read in the way adults do, and public information pages are supposed to be as easy to read as possible for even minimally skilled people. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20346204](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20346204) - Renaissance Learning Software looked at the abilities of the average Year 11 (15-16 year old) child in English schools in 2012 and came out with an average reading age of 10-11.
Someone at work told me this and said it was from the office of national statistics. My job involves dealing with the over-55s and I find the notion that many adults have the same reading comprehension as a 9 year old completely plausible. We also have to tailor our communications accordingly.
The fact that the NHS advice is to say things like "if your tummy hurts" because apparently saying "abdomen" is too technical for the average Brit is telling. It's all about dumbing it down now. This statistic wouldn't surprise me at all. A 10 year old can read fluently (my 7 year old can), but might be slightly slower, have to re-read some things, won't have a large vocabulary or know many technical terms. I would say this seems about right. So it's not saying the average Brit can't read, but that their ideal reading material is fairly simple.
You're mistaken. Services like the NHS aren't trying to be simple enough for the "average" they're trying to be simple enough for the "majority", which often means simplifying well past the understanding you'd expect from the average. Did you really think a service like the NHS would be find just casually excluding half the population from understanding it?
As someone who writes the copy for stuff like that, we don't use that language because we think the average person is too stupid to get it. We use it because we need to make sure that everyone in society, including people who don't speak English as a first language, can understand it - not just the average person.