5/6/2010
Writer's Digest of Web Readability Tools – What they Are, How they Work
Tools to Help You Write with Resonance
WordsCount Readability Tool
We’ve been discussing readability tools. In my last post, I covered the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tool. This time, I’ll cover several others and what they have to offer.
Each readability tool is slightly different, and the results you can expect from each will vary, based on several factors:
• The writing aspects on which they are based
• The formula they use to measure readability
• The scale they use to express results
Since each tool uses a different combination of factors, you’ll see a pretty wide variation between the grade levels the tests generate for a given writing sample. Keep this in mind as you try each one, and when possible, compare the results of several. This is easy to do, since some tools display the results of multiple readability indexes, or scales.
Readability tools are generally of five types:
• Web-based types that use a text box for pasting in the content to be evaluated
• Web-based types that analyze an entire website or web page, based on a URL which is entered into the link field
• Web-based types that let you place a link to the tool on your site for automatic evaluation of either a web page or a portion of a web page
• System-based types that you can download to analyze a document either while it’s being created or after it’s been created
• System-based types that are application specific, meaning they are part of another application, such as MS-Outlook, MS-Word, or Google Documents
In addition to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tool
(this one yields results in your choice of several different languages), other popular tools are based on or include results from the readability indexes described below:
The Gunning Fog Index
The Gunning Fog Index uses a weighted average of the number of words per sentence and the percentage of words containing three or more syllables. It yields the number of years of schooling your reader presumably requires to understand the text on the first reading. The Gunning Fog Index formula is the basis for the index. This online tool consists of a direct-input text box for evaluating your sample.
The Coleman Liau Index
The Coleman Liau Index formula uses the average number of characters per word, as well as the number of sentences in the sample to calculate readability, yielding an approximation of the U.S. grade level required for a student to comprehend the text.
The New Dale-Chall Readability Formula
The New Dale-Chall Formula is very accurate, since it’s based on “hard”, or unfamilar, words rather than word length or number of syllables. It uses as its foundation a list of familiar words – words that are not on it are considered “hard.”
The Automated Readability Index (ARI)
The Automated Readability Index formula calculates characters per word and words per sentence. It yields an approximate representation of the U.S. grade level mastery required for comprehending a piece of writing.
The SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) Formula
The SMOG calculator uses a formula which is based on the number of three syllable (or more than three syllable) words in a 3-10 sentence sample. After applying the formula (provided at the above link) to this number, the tool yields the estimated number of years of schooling needed to thoroughly understand a piece of writing.
Links to Various ReadabilityTools
I’ve broken down the list of tools into various categories for your convenience. Therefore, some of the following tools are listed more than once. (I’ve placed an asterisk next to those.)
Tools that Provide the Following:
Only a Direct Text Input Box
Only a URL Field
Both Direct Text Input Boxes and URL Fields
All Three Evaluation Methods
The Readability Test Tool at Read-able.com*
Tools that Display Multiple Readability Test Results
The Readability Test Tool at Read-able.com *
For a list of tools that includes a few not mentioned in this post, visit 8 Readability Web Tools to Test Your Writing Quality.
Take a little time to experiment with these tools, and watch the readability of your writing skyrocket!
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Using Readability Tools in Outlook and Google Docs. As mentioned in this post, you can also test your document’s readability in Microsoft Outlook or Word. The following Help topic at Microsoft Office Online explains how to test your document’s readability in the 2007 version of Microsoft Office, using either Outlook or Word.
Since my own version of Word is an earlier one (2003), I had to do a bit of exploring to find my own readability tool – but find it I did under Tools–> Options–> Spelling & Grammar. Under the Grammar heading, I made sure the following boxes contained checkmarks: “check grammar with spelling” and “show readability statistics.” A little more investigating revealed that I could display the statistics by clicking the Spell-Check icon in the menu bar (an ABC above a checkmark). If you have an older version of Word, you may need to use these instructions for accessing your readability tool.
Another way to test readability is to use Google Documents. When using Google Docs, you’ll find the readability statistics under Tools–> Word Count. Both Flesch-Kincaid scores and the Automated Readability Index are included.
3 Responses to Writer's Digest of Web Readability Tools – What they Are, How they Work
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Jeanne, I had no idea there were so many tools for readability. The SMOG calculator might be especially helpful for business writing, in order to knock out those hifalutin words that the average reader doesn’t have time to decipher. What do you think?
.-= Brad Shorr’s last blog ..Writer’s Digest of Web Readability Tools – What they Are, How they Work =-.
Hi, Brad! I think it’s great to have so many readability tools to choose from. That way, each writer can choose the one that’s most effective to his/her type of writing and audience. The Plain Language at Work Newsletter apparently agrees with you that the SMOG calculator would be especially helpful for business writing, since they featured an article about the calculator in their professional publication. Here’s a link: http://www.harrymclaughlin.com/plain_language_at_work_newsletter.html . (For further information about readability issues at work, readers can access the newsletter’s archives by clicking the link at the top of the above article.)
The SMOG formula reportedly counts syllables more accurately than any other readability program, since it uses a syllable counter developed by JAVA programming expert Alain Trottier. It’s therefore likely that its results are also more accurate than other programs, making it a great choice for those hoping to achieve plain language in the workplace – not to mention elsewhere.