After you have read and watched, go through the papers you have written while a graduate student. Pick out a paper with some substance, that is, a paper that you spent some time working on. There is no need to edit or otherwise try to improve the writing, nor do you need to try to find a more difficult or less difficult writing sample in the hope that you can manipulate your scores. That is not the point of the exercise. There are no wrong scores here.
Weekly exercise: Readability formulas
This exercise is designed to introduce you to the world of readability formulas. The exercise is also designed to introduce you to your own writing.
The Flesch Reading Ease Formula is one means used to measure the readability of a document in terms of school grade level. The formula is used to determine the readability of textbooks, and it is used by many US government agencies as well, including the US Department of Defense. Readability formulas are a means to determine if the writing in a document is appropriate in terms of difficulty for given readers at given reading levels.
For this assignment you will subject your own writing to an analysis using a readability formula.
The use of readability formulas is contested in plain language studies, but they are also an important part of the history of the movement. If you watched the introduction to the Plain Language Summit 2018 you know Ginny Redish is not a fan of readability formulas, and some of you may know teachers who have strong opinions about their worth. In any case, everyone in PL needs to be aware of the conversation surrounding the use of readability formulas.
Figure 1: Screen capture of readability test used in video
Before you begin
Please watch “Plain Language and Readability” by Jessica Bolack Frank. This 17-minute video is a nice review of material that has already been covered this semester, but the speaker also discusses readability tests. Now would also be a good time to watch Meredith Larson’s “Meeting People Where They Are” in the Plain Language Summit 2018 videos if you have not done so already. Also, here is “The Average American Reader Needs You to Write (Even More) Clearly,” an updated, longer (one hour), and more detailed version of the same presentation that was posted in May of this year.
For historical reference, scan Rudolph Flesch’s “New Readability Yardstick” (in Academic resources). Also, read Joseph Kimble (pages 49-51) and Jonathon Fullwood’s “A cat, a hat, and a simple measure of gobbledygook: How readable is your writing.”
Exercise
After you have read and watched, go through the papers you have written while a graduate student. Pick out a paper with some substance, that is, a paper that you spent some time working on. There is no need to edit or otherwise try to improve the writing, nor do you need to try to find a more difficult or less difficult writing sample in the hope that you can manipulate your scores. That is not the point of the exercise. There are no wrong scores here.
1. Run a readability test using Microsoft Word on a paper you wrote while in graduate school.
Here is a two minute video explaining how to run a readability test on a MS Word document. When you finish the test, take a screen capture of the box that displays your results.[footnoteRef:1] Crop the image (see Fig. 1) and refer to it as Fig. 1 in a memo addressed to me. [1: You can do a screen capture using the “print screen” (prt sc) key on the top row of your computer keyboard. The key serves a “copy” function and then you can “paste” (right click>paste) the image. Click on the image to activate the “crop” function. If you need help, let me know. ]
Important: When you set up the test include the Grammar & Style option from the pull down menu. This will report the percentage of passive voice sentences in your paper.
2. In a memo addressed to me, briefly describe the paper/assignment and discuss the readability results. What (if anything) is your takeaway? Are the averages higher or lower than you expected? Is the reading level higher or lower than you expected? What are some specific things you would need to do to lower the reading level if the paper were intended to be read by a general interest audience? What are some specific sentence level matters you could use to improve your writing based on Plain Language principles?
When you are finished with the readability exercise in Microsoft Word, open this website and copy and paste a paragraph or two into the textbox: http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php. You will see the results for six additional reading formulas. As an alternative, you can use Readability Analyzer: https://datayze.com/readability-analyzer. Are the scores consistent with the Flesch Reading Ease scores? Play around a little and compare different sections of your paper to see if some passages had noticeably higher or lower scores. Again, read through the different scores, tell me what you did, and report any interesting findings.
3. Post a summary of your results
After you have submitted your exercise to me, post a summary in the “Results of readability tests” Discussions forum. You can copy and paste relevant passages from your report but please do not just upload the report you submitted to me as an attached file. Tell us what you learned. Do not just show us what you did. As you summarize your results consider whether you think readability formulas have a place in the PL movement.
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