According to this fabulous tool, it has been revealed one needs to have a 7th grade education to read Sactown Royalty!

The program checks content on a given website and uses number of words per sentence, syllables per word, and number of high-syllable words to quantify the readability of said website. Using the "Gunning-Fog Index," the data can be put on a scale to describe at what reading level, expressed in school grades, a reader would have to be at to understand the content.

Sactown Royalty checks in (as of right before this post) at 7.63 – which means someone 60 percent the way through eighth grade would be OK reading the site. Yay middle school kids!

Using lowpost.net's list of 30 top basketball blogs, I also gauged the readability of basketblogdom. Anyone could've guessed that Free Darko would have the highest threshold, and they do – FD's Gunning-Fog score is 10.28. (Hell, I'm a college graduate and I don't understand some of what Shoals and the Recluse write.)

The lowest Gunning-Fog score was surprising, though. (And note that low Gunning-Fog scores aren't a bad thing – the tool's programmer makes sure to note that conciseness and clearness is valued. Though, as can be attested by the wholesale scorn of cavepeople and monkeys in our society, simpletondom is not highly looked upon.) Anyways, our Canadian friends at The Basketball Jones earned the lowest score at a remarkable 5.39. Yes, sixth-graders are allowed at TBJ. (And yes, these guys also produce a podcast that is easily 10 times better than any show that's ever appeared on KHTK.)

Here's the full thing. (Wait, that's four straight monosyllablic words in a row. That won't do! Must raise score… oh crap! Too many short words! Must use "antidisestablishmentarianism" in a sentence! Wait, I just did! Woohoo!)

Of course, none of this means anything. Sometime this weekend, I'll compare a few Marty McNeil and Mark Kreidler columns just for fun.