Online Readability Test
December 30 by Leon Ho | Technology, Uncategorized
Over at Juicy Studio, they have a tool on testing how readable the content is. You can test any online document by entering the URL into the page. It will return couple of reading level scores, including Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid. Even though they are just algorithms, they can be a good indications how suitable it is for your readers. Here are some background on readability tests:
Readability is the measure of how easy it is to read and comprehend a document. Readability tests were first developed in the 1920s in the United States. They are mathematical formulas, designed to determine the suitability of books for American students at a certain age, or grade level. Automating the process was intended to make it easier for tutors, librarians, and publishers to determine whether a book would be suitable for its intended audience. The formulas are based around the average words to a sentence, and the average syllables used per word. As such, they tend to reward short sentences made up of short words.
Being mathematically based, readability tests are unable to determine the likelihood that the document is comprehensible, interesting, or enjoyable. It’s possible to obtain good readability scores with gobbledygook, providing the content contains short sentences made up of monosyllabic words. We’ll leave the question as to why the word “monosyllabic” has five syllables for another day. Layout and design are also important factors to the readability of a document that cannot be determined using readability tests. Documents aimed at a higher level may require background knowledge, which cannot be determined by the tests…
Readability Test – [Juicy Studio]
That link just goes to a 404 on this site
Thank you, Mary-Ann – Caught your comment before I head to bed for the day. It is fixed.
I tried the readability test and my blog rated a score of 66.99 for the Flesch Reading Ease test. I’m quite happy with that since “authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.
A very useful tool. Thanks for the link.
This looks good for evaluating readability of a website. Are there any sites that can evaluate readability of hard copy?
@Andrea Try this readability test – it does both URLs and “hard copy” – well, a text box to paste your copy into ;-)
http://www.read-able.com/
best, best
Read the selection below and then answer the questions below.
The sea has always provided a valuable source of food for the people of the Emirates. Fish traps could be of the fixed hard type, or small moveable traps woven from palm fronds. In addition to fish, turtles also provided valuable protein. [A]
The country is bordered by 600 km of coast. As can be expected, the inhabitants made every possible use of the islands’ resources. The extensive tidal shallows are ideal for fishing with traps. [B] These were intricately constructed fences where the fish were caught when the water receded. Another method involved stretching two nets at right angles to the tidal creek from a central pole. But there were also methods by which one man alone could secure a good catch.
Fish which were not consumed fresh were hung up in the sun to dry. [C] Others were treated with salt and taken to the inland settlements. Some of the small fish were dried and used as camel fodder or as fertilizer for the gardens. But, as for the fresh fish, the fishermen on the coast of Abu Dhabi were a long way from markets. There is archaeological evidence that on most of Abu Dhabi’s numerous islands, tribes people came to fish in the winter and even brought their camels over in boats. [D] They used rainwater, stored in cisterns, or caught in horizontally placed sails.