The Reading Level of the State of Union Address Is in Decline

There are many of the words that were abundant earlier, but have been replaced with "simpler" variants over time. I wonder if someone from 1780 were to rate speeches they would come out with exactly the opposite slope.

I think they found that language is evolving over time and that evolution is mostly linear.

> In simple terms, writing with longer sentences and bigger words yields a higher score (grade level) than simplistic writing.

I wish people would start using dictionaries of words taught at different grade levels instead. There has been an effort throughout the years towards greater clarity in writing and speaking; I don't think shorter sentences should imply lower reading levels.

Here, let me take an easy example: Federalist Paper #12, written in 1787, from my copy of "Charters of Freedom":

> By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness.

That's beautiful writing. It's artful, it's poetic. It's also dense and aimed squarely at college-educated people. As Samuel Clemens said, "My books are water, those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water."

The implication of the priceonomics article is that literacy is declining. I suspect the opposite is actually true -- literacy is at as high a level as it's ever been. What's declining is florid writing, and where political statements are concerned, that's not really undesirable.

And the thing is, it's not that hard to compile dictionaries by grade level. I did, and I'm a dumbass. Feel free to rip off the work I've done so far:

http://shomisearch.com/api/vocab/grade/{pre-k, k, 1, 2, 3..12, college}

or, if you'd like the data sources included for each word,

http://shomisearch.com/api/vocab/grade+sources/{pre-k, k, 1, 2, 3..12, college}

I hope someone that's better at statistics can take the data and analyze the state of the union addresses with it. I'd love to see how it compares to the traditional measure of reading level.

My understanding is that early SOU papers weren't delivered as speeches, but were mostly technical reports intended for what today would be regarded as people like the OMB and similar congressional bodies.

More recently they're vehicles for delivering messages to the public.