What Is a Waffle Score? How We Measure Verbal Bloat

When you paste text into waffled, you get two things back: a shorter version of your writing, and a Waffle Score. The score is a label for how bloated your original text was — how much excess was packed around the ideas.

Understanding the five tiers helps you read your own writing more accurately, and gives you a benchmark to aim for.

How the score is calculated

The Waffle Score is based on the reduction percentage: how much shorter the de-waffled version is compared to the original.

The reduction measures genuine verbal excess — filler phrases, passive constructions that add length without clarity, jargon that substitutes for plain words, redundant qualifiers, nominalisation. It does not measure content. If your original had five distinct ideas and the cleaned version also has five distinct ideas, the only thing lost was the padding around them.

The five tiers are:

| Score | Reduction | What it means | |---|---|---| | Barely Waffled | 0-10% | Tight, efficient writing with minimal excess | | Light Waffle | 11-20% | Some filler, but broadly well-controlled | | Properly Waffled | 21-35% | Noticeable excess throughout | | Heavy Waffle | 36-50% | Significant bloat affecting clarity | | Weapons-Grade Waffle | 51%+ | More padding than content |

Tier 1: Barely Waffled (0-10% reduction)

This is where good professional writers tend to land. A 5-8% reduction typically represents a handful of filler phrases and one or two redundant qualifiers — the kind of small inefficiencies that appear in almost all first drafts.

Example original (52 words): "It is important to note that the proposed changes to the approval process will, in most cases, lead to faster turnaround times for the team. We will, of course, continue to monitor this and report back on any issues that may arise going forward."

Cleaned (48 words): "The proposed changes to the approval process should lead to faster turnaround times. We will monitor progress and report any issues."

Reduction: ~8% — Barely Waffled.

The ideas are the same. The difference is small. But across a 5,000-word report, that 8% is 400 words returned to the reader.

Tier 2: Light Waffle (11-20% reduction)

Light Waffle is the most common score for competent professional writing. The writer knows their subject and has organised their ideas well — but they have not edited for word count, and it shows in consistent patterns: long preambles, hedging phrases, corporate vocabulary where plain words would do.

Example original (68 words): "As we move forward into the next phase of the project, it will be really important that all team members are proactively engaging with the new process. Going forward, we should be making sure that the relevant stakeholders are kept fully informed at every stage, and that any issues are identified and addressed in a timely manner."

Cleaned (55 words): "In the next project phase, all team members should engage with the new process. Keep stakeholders informed at each stage and address issues promptly."

Reduction: ~19% — Light Waffle.

This is a clean, practical improvement. The cleaned version could appear in any professional document without revision.

Tier 3: Properly Waffled (21-35% reduction)

At Properly Waffled, the excess is structural, not incidental. The writer is padding deliberately — often because they are uncertain about the content, writing to a word count, or falling back on professional habits that prize length over clarity.

This is the territory of most board reports, strategy documents, and corporate emails.

Example original (90 words): "In terms of our overall approach to the customer experience challenge that we have been grappling with as an organisation, it is our view that a holistic, end-to-end transformation of how we interface with customers at each and every touchpoint will be fundamentally necessary if we are to hope to compete effectively in today's rapidly evolving landscape. This is not a challenge we can hope to address in isolation, and we will need to ensure that all key stakeholders are aligned and onboard before proceeding."

Cleaned (58 words): "To compete effectively, we need to transform the customer experience across every touchpoint. This cannot be done in isolation — we need stakeholder alignment before proceeding."

Reduction: ~36% — crossing into Heavy Waffle territory here, but the 21-35% band is where the pattern originates.

Tier 4: Heavy Waffle (36-50% reduction)

Heavy Waffle is the territory of writing that has lost the thread between ideas. The words are present but the meaning is buried under so many qualifications, throat-clearing phrases, and jargon substitutions that readers have to do significant work to extract it.

The danger at this level is that readers stop trying. They skim, they miss the key information, and they reply asking for clarification — which defeats the entire purpose of writing it down.

Signs you are in Heavy Waffle territory:

Sentences that take 25+ words to make a single point
Paragraphs that restate the same idea twice in different language
Openings that spend two or three sentences explaining what you are about to say
Conclusions that arrive three paragraphs after the last piece of new information

A 40% reduction typically means the cleaned version is more than twice as readable — not because it contains more ideas, but because those ideas are no longer competing with the packaging.

Tier 5: Weapons-Grade Waffle (51%+)

This tier exists. It shows up in committee minutes, regulatory filings, certain categories of academic writing, and the emails of people who have been in large organisations for a long time.

When more than half of your text can be removed without losing a single idea, the writing has inverted its purpose. It is now primarily an exercise in producing words, with meaning as the secondary concern.

The most extreme examples we have seen in testing have run to 65-70% reduction — where 1,200 words contained roughly 400 words of content.

This is not a moral failing. It is usually the result of specific habits, specific environments, and specific professional pressures. The habits can be unlearnt.

What score should you aim for?

For most professional communication — emails, reports, proposals, briefings — Light Waffle or better is the target. A 10-15% reduction is the normal output of a careful editing pass on good first-draft writing.

Barely Waffled is achievable on short, high-stakes communication where you have edited specifically for length: executive summaries, subject lines, one-pagers.

Properly Waffled is not a catastrophe. It is a flag that the piece would benefit from an editing pass before it goes out. Heavy Waffle means that pass is urgent. Weapons-Grade means the piece probably needs to be rewritten from the structure up.

Try it on your own writing

Paste anything into waffled — an email, a report, a LinkedIn post — and see where it lands. The tool returns the cleaned version alongside your score so you can compare directly.

Two free uses per day. No account required.

If your writing scores Light Waffle or better, send it. If it scores higher, you now know exactly how much is left to cut.