For over a week now, we have been dealing with nominalizations and noun compounds in our Scientific Writing course. We have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of cramming words loaded with highly specialized complex meanings into titles. We have reached diverse conclusions. While we recognize the need to make our titles as informative as possible, we also admit that comprehensibility may be compromised if we step off the line.
One way to keep track of the amount of information compressed in a text is to use indices that loosely predict the level of difficulty it poses to the reader. In the past, we calculated the comprehensibility scores by hand, a long painful process that I discourage you to undertake. That is the bad news. The good news is that you can do that online by simply pasting your text on a dialog box and pressing enter.
To test the suitability of the applications I am about to recommend, I scrutinized one of the posts in this blog, Teaser. I was well aware of the fact that the scores would give me a near failing grade, so I went ahead and my suspicions were confirmed. According to one of the applications, a reader would need 10+ years of schooling to be able to understand the text, and we are talking about native speakers here! Language learners would obviously have a harder time deciphering it.
Bear in mind that all the methods the applications are based on rely largely on word, syllable and character counts, although some of them identify grammatical units and examine their complexity. In general, numerical approaches to linguistic analysis tend to overlook features that play an essential role in the construction of meaning. Handle the information they supply with extreme care and do not lose sight of your own common sense.
One way to keep track of the amount of information compressed in a text is to use indices that loosely predict the level of difficulty it poses to the reader. In the past, we calculated the comprehensibility scores by hand, a long painful process that I discourage you to undertake. That is the bad news. The good news is that you can do that online by simply pasting your text on a dialog box and pressing enter.
To test the suitability of the applications I am about to recommend, I scrutinized one of the posts in this blog, Teaser. I was well aware of the fact that the scores would give me a near failing grade, so I went ahead and my suspicions were confirmed. According to one of the applications, a reader would need 10+ years of schooling to be able to understand the text, and we are talking about native speakers here! Language learners would obviously have a harder time deciphering it.
Bear in mind that all the methods the applications are based on rely largely on word, syllable and character counts, although some of them identify grammatical units and examine their complexity. In general, numerical approaches to linguistic analysis tend to overlook features that play an essential role in the construction of meaning. Handle the information they supply with extreme care and do not lose sight of your own common sense.
- Tests Document Readability. This free online software tool calculates readability : Coleman Liau index, Flesh Kincaid Grade Level, ARI (Automated Readability Index), SMOG. The measure of readability used here is the indication of number of years of education that a person needs to be able to understand the text easily on the first reading. Comprehension tests and skills training. This app supplies feedback on the structures and words you might want to improve to increase the comprehensibility of your text. It also produces an interpretation of the scores, so you can actually understand why your text is considered to be easily readable or not.
- Check text readability. A tool to give an indication of how easy text is to read, using the Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning-Fog, Coleman-Liau, SMOG and Automated Readability scoring systems. The interface is quite nice, but it provides very little input on the interpretation of the data.
- Style & Diction. This is an interactive section for checking a sample of writing. It is modeled after the ancient Unix utilities style and diction. Enter or copy text into the first box below. The scores to the right give the readability of the text according to various formulas. This is probably the simplest of all three. What I like about it is that it retrieves a version of your text where complex words are underlined.
There are more reliable parameters that should actually be taken into consideration when analyzing the density of a text, like the frequency of use and the level of formality or specialization of the words used, but a computer script can only do so much. So think of the information you obtain as an indicator of what your reader might consider to be more than it is safe to take in.
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