Problem with the way it calculates sentence length

#17510
  • Resolved Megan French
    Rank Math free

    I use a lot of lists on my posts. Many of these lists are long, but since they are not full sentences themselves, or are a list of directions, I do not put a “.” at the end of each element on a list (that would look stupid to the reader). However, RankMath then tells me that my flesch score not good. Its advice is to use shorter sentences. The first time I saw this, I was confused because I already know to use short sentence whenever possible in a blog post. So I looked at the post and realized that the only thing that wasn’t a “short sentence” was my lists. so I put a “.” at the end of every line of the list and found that my flesch score was suddenly very good.

    I think that this is a design flaw. The purpose of the flesch score is to rate readability and lists are very reader-friendly. Is there some way that you can make it so that it doesn’t penalize the use of lists? I want to know the readability of the rest of my post without having to spend the time to put a “.” at the end of every line first (and them subsequently having to spend even more time deleting them so that it doesn’t look bad).

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Michael Davis
    Rank Math pro

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and for the feedback, we really appreciate it.

    Kindly allow me to consult the developer on this and then I’ll get back to you.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​​

    Todd
    Rank Math free

    Hello Megan,

    Thank you for your feedback.

    There are two ways we detect the size of paragraphs:
    1. We check for a period at the end of the sentence
    2. We check for actual line-breaks or <p> tags

    If a sentence is long, doesn’t have a period but is broken down into paragraphs – we will still detect it as a separate paragraph.

    Please check this video for reference:
    https://i.rankmath.com/bywyWr

    In your case, I imagine you are using <li> tags to divide the content and that is why Rank Math cannot detect them as paragraphs.

    We have noted this as a suggestion and we will see what we can do to improve it.

    In the meantime, please feel free to ignore that test or let us know and we will share instructions on how to disable it.

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The ticket ‘Problem with the way it calculates sentence length’ is closed to new replies.