What are the scales of the scores evaluated by MS Word Editor?

Question

For my formal writing, Microsoft Word Editor lists: Spelling 22, Grammar 90, Vacabulary 34, et cetera. What are the ranges or scales for those evaluations and what is poor, fair, good, or excellent? Or what is average, et cetea. What do the niumbers indicate?

Answer 1

Hello !

Are you referring to Microsoft Editor's sidebar on Word ?

The numbers you see next to categories like Spelling, Grammar, Conciseness.. are counts of issues detected in each category.
For example, If Word shows "spelling: 22," it indicates how many issues Word detected; it's not a score.

Please let me know if you have any other question !

Answer 2

The numbers shown next to Spelling, Grammar, Vocabulary, etc. in Microsoft Word Editor are not documented as standardized “scores” with defined ranges such as poor/fair/good/excellent. Available documentation only defines and exposes Word’s readability statistics (Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level), not the internal scale used by Editor’s category scores.

For readability statistics, Word uses:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 0–100 scale; higher is easier to read. For most standard documents, a score of about 60–70 is recommended.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: U.S. school grade level; for most standard documents, around 7.0–8.0 is recommended.

These readability scores are based on:

• Average sentence length (ASL) = number of words / number of sentences
• Average syllables per word (ASW) = number of syllables / number of words

Formulas:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 206.835 – (1.015 × ASL) – (84.6 × ASW)
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: (0.39 × ASL) + (11.8 × ASW) – 15.59

Documentation does not define how Editor’s individual category numbers (Spelling 22, Grammar 90, Vocabulary 34, etc.) are scaled or what thresholds correspond to qualitative labels such as poor, fair, good, or excellent.

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References:

• Frequently asked questions about grammar proofing in Word
• Get your document's readability and level statistics