CNN: 'Palin Spoke at 10th-grade Level, Biden at Eighth'

Note to all those media members claiming how much more intelligent Joe Biden is than Sarah Palin: the pompous, holier-than-thou Senator from Delaware spoke at about an eighth-grade level during Thursday's vice presidential debate while Gov. Palin communicated her thoughts at almost a tenth-grade level.

Say it isn't so, Joe!

As deliciously reported by CNN.com Friday (photo courtesy AP):

An analysis carried out by a language monitoring service said Friday that Gov. Sarah 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 analysis by the Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor said Palin, governor of Alaska and the GOP vice presidential nominee, used the passive voice in 8 percent of her sentences, far more than the 5 percent used by the Democratic senator from Delaware. [...]

The two candidates were nearly even in total number of words spoken. The normally voluble Biden restrained his tendency to ramble by uttering just 5,492 words during the 90-minute debate, versus 5,235 for Palin, Payack said. [...]

Here's the breakdown:

Grade level: Biden, 7.8; Palin, 9.5 (Newspapers are typically written to a sixth-grade reading level.)

Sentences per paragraph: statistically tied at 2.7 for Biden and 2.6 for Palin.

Letters per word: tied at 4.4.

Ease of reading: Biden, 66.7 (with 100 being the easiest to read or hear), versus 62.4 for Palin.

Hehehehehe.