Tool input
Overview
About this tool
Scores the slice of a caption that appears above each network’s fold separately from the caption as a whole, and reports the gap. A post that opens with a forty-word clause and gets plain in the third sentence reads as hard, because the third sentence is behind “more”. No target grade is quoted per network, because no network publishes one.
Instructions
How to use it
Paste the caption and tick the surfaces it is going to. Each one is scored on the part it shows before the fold.
Why the whole-caption score is the wrong number
Instagram cuts at about 125 characters, TikTok at 90, LinkedIn at 210. The reader decides whether to open the caption from what is left, so the grade level of the visible slice is the one that describes their experience — and it is frequently several grades away from the score for the whole thing.
The first sentence gets its own row
It is what a scroller reads, and averaging it into the rest hides it. Twenty-five words before the first full stop is a lot to ask of somebody who has not decided to read yet.
Questions
Frequently asked
What reading level should a caption be?
Nobody publishes a target, and this tool will not invent one. What is worth acting on is the gap: if the visible slice reads several grades harder than the rest, the plain writing is hidden behind “more”.
How is this different from the readability checker?
The readability checker scores a whole text and names the sentences that made the score bad, which is right for a page or a script. This scores the part each network shows before it truncates, which is the only part most people read.
Is Flesch–Kincaid reliable on a short caption?
Below about thirty words, no. One long word swings the grade by a whole level. The tool says so when your text is that short.
Does a lower grade level get more reach?
No platform has said so, and this tool does not claim it. What a hard opening measurably does is give somebody a reason not to continue.
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