Readability
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Readability is a measure of the comprehensibility or understandability of written text. There are many methods and formulas for determining readability and the related reading age.
Some word processing programs measure readability using several parameters such as sentence length, word length within sentences and the relative complexity of sentence structure. Readability formulas are often validated using the McCall-Crabbs passages. Grammatical voice affects readability as passages written in active language are sometimes considered to be more readable than those written in passive language.
Obfuscated language can be used to construct prose that appears to have meaning but which defies comprehension because the text is too ambiguous to cohere with any precision. Technical matters will often score poorly for readability due to their complexity rather than their lack of precision.
Presentation factors unrelated to the language of the text also affect readability, for example choice of typeface, text size, layout and colours.
Measures of readability
- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level
- Gunning Fog Index
- Johnson Readability Formula
- SMOG Index
- Spache
- Fry Readability Formula
External link
- Writing Sample Analyzer (http://resources.aellalei.com/writer/sample.html), reports on the Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for a given piece of text.
- Readability Analyzer (http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/resources/readability-score/), an online tool for measuring the Flesch Reading Ease, Grade level, and Gunning-Fog Index of given text.
- [1] (http://www.educational-psychologist.co.uk/fry_readability_program.htm), provides a program for determining readability based on the Fry Readability Formula.de:Lesbarkeit