According to a group of pedantic poo-bahs, Governor Palin “…spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level in Thursday night’s debate between the vice presidential candidates.”
The same group that rated her comments at a grade level of 9.5 and Biden’s at a grade level of 7.8 also put her penultimate sentence “at a grade level of 18.3” (several “grade levels” shy of the reading level of the inhabitants of twc central*–and yeh, the CNN report did NOT use the word “penultimate,” choosing instead the awkward, dumbed down and wordier, “second-to-last” formulation… no doubt in recognition of the subliteracy of CNN’s usual readership/viewership. Either that or the writer didn’t know the word “penultimate”–another distinct possibility).
Oh, *yawn* Put Academia Nut Fruitcakes and Mass Media Podpeople together and this is what usually results: stupid yammering.