Nicholas copied the transcripts of the two press conferences into separate Word documents, removed the introductions by both men, “which are largely or fully scripted,” and then deleted all reporter questions from the transcripts. What was left were the unscripted answers offered by each president to all questions. Finally, Nicholas ran the Flesch-Kincaid readability tool on each document. The results showed that Bush’s answers were spoken at a 7th grade level, whereas Obama’s were at a 10th grade level, although Obama was more likely than Bush to use passive sentences.

 

Obama Press Conference Answers Three Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First (by Mark Nicholas, Political Base)

Test the Readability of a Website (by Gez Lemon, Juicy Studio)