Readability

Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects like font size, line height, and line length). Researchers have used various factors to measure readability, such as Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects like font size, line height, and line length). Researchers have used various factors to measure readability, such as Readability is more than simply legibility—which is a measure of how easily a reader can distinguish individual letters or characters from each other. Higher readability eases reading effort and speed for any reader, but it is especially important for those who do not have high reading comprehension. In readers with average or poor reading comprehension, raising the readability level of a text from mediocre to good can make the difference between success and failure of its communication goals. Readability exists in both natural language and programming languages though in different forms. In programming, things such as programmer comments, choice of loop structure, and choice of names can determine the ease with which humans can read computer program code. People have defined readability in various ways, e.g., in: The Literacy Dictionary, Jeanne Chall and Edgar Dale, G. Harry McLaughlin, William DuBay. Easy reading helps learning and enjoyment, so what we write should be easy to understand. While many writers and speakers since ancient times have used plain language, the 20th century brought more focus to reading ease. Much research has focused on matching prose to reading skills. This has used many successful formulas: in research, government, teaching, publishing, the military, medicine, and business. Many people in many languages have been helped by this. By the year 2000, there were over 1,000 studies on readability formulas in professional journals about their validity and merit. The study of reading is not just in teaching. Research has shown that much money is wasted by companies in making texts hard for the average reader to read. There are summaries of this research; see the links in this section. Many textbooks on reading include pointers to readability.