Readability Analysis

	Wondering if your materials are written at an appropriate reading level for your audiences?
	Need to know the readability score of your materials?
	Need materials written or revised to meet strict readability requirements? CLG uses the latest assessment tools, combined with our extensive experience, to accurately measure the reading level of your text.

Readability Services

	Readability analysis and reports using a variety of formulas, conducted both manually and with special software programs
	Comprehensive reports specifying recommendations to improve readability of your materials
	Short workshops on how to do a readability analysis

What is Readability?

The term “readability analysis” refers to a set of mathematical formulas used to produce a numerical score. A readability score is expressed as a grade level. The score reflects the relative difficulty of the text.

What Do Readability Scores Tell Us?

Readability scores give us a good “guesstimate” of where text falls on a continuum of difficulty. It’s critical to understand that readability scores don’t tell us whether an adult with a certain level of education will be able to read the text. There is not a direct, one-to-one correspondence between an individual’s level of education, or their reading ability as measured on a reading test, and their ability to read a particular piece of text. Readability scores only give us a general idea of the difficulty of text.

Why is Readability Important?

Knowing the reading level of your text can give you an idea how many U.S. adults may be able to understand it. The U.S. Department of Education's 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) data showed that 47% of U.S. adults, some 90 million people, have low or insufficient literacy skills. Some people do not read at all, but many people do read, although with some difficulty. This means that it is important to design effective materials for the many people in the U.S. who are marginal readers. Readability analysis is one measure that helps us to do that.

You’ll also find out if skilled readers can get your point quickly or if they will have to wrestle with it to get the message. It can also show you how much progress you’ve made if you’ve revised a piece to make it easier.

What About Readability Software Tools?

Many people have discovered that popular word processing programs such as Word and Word Perfect have readability functions. There are also a few commercial software programs designed specifically for readability analysis. However, before using these programs, you need to know the following:

	How to “clean up” a document before running the readability check
	How to interpret the results
	Which formulas are accurate and reliable
	Which formulas are best for evaluating particular materials

Software Programs Can Be Unpredictable

The readability function in word processing software can be very unpredictable. Here’s one example: We analyzed a document which scored at 7th-grade reading level. We closed the document, reopened it, and ran the readability check again. The second time, with no changes in the text, it scored 4th-grade level.

Readability software tools may be fast and convenient, but can give you very inaccurate results.

Let us help you get accurate results using formulas accepted by reading specialists. We’ll also help you interpret the data.