Dale-Chall Score

The Dale-Chall readability score innovates on earlier readability formulas by incorporating a count of difficult words. In the Dale-Chall system, a difficult word is defined as any word that does not appear in a list of some 3,000 familiar words. Edgar Dale and Jeanne Chall created the original formula, provided below, in 1948.

Dale-Chall readability scores correspond to roughly the below grade levels.