Readability Resources

Here are the materials I referred to in my presentation at UPA 2010 about determining the readability of content:

• The slides for my UPA 2010 presentation Determining Readability
• The slides for my PLAIN 2009 presentation about using multiple methods for determining the readability of printed documents, Assessing the Usability of Credit Card Disclosures.
• Cued-response protocol test: For a great example of the use of paraphrasing to determine whether a reader understands text, see Reva Daniel’s case study, “Revising Letters to Veterans” (pdf) in Technical Communication, First Quarter 1995.
• Cloze procedure: Using the “Cloze” Procedure To Assess Reading Material for Alternative/Adult Education Students (pdf) Allison, et al.
• Readability formulas: For a history of readability formulas, check out William DuBay’s “The Principles of Readability” (pdf). For the story on what formulas don’t tell you, read Ginny Redish’s “Readability formulas have even more limitations than Klare discusses” (requires ACM membership). Readability Calculations and Readability Studio are applications that apply multiple formulas to a sample of text. There are also free online tools at Edit Central, Added Bytes and Juicy Studio.