Discusses why proper nouns should be counted and how to count syllables and words, recent work on the validity of readability formulas, and the readability graph extrapolated to college level. (JM)

Two studies performed in secondary schools and at the University of Ottawa investigated the usefulness of Georges Henry's 1975 short readability formula, designed specifically for French, for evaluating instructional texts. (MSE)

Validates the college-level designation of the Fry Graph using comparative validity data. (AEA)

Finds that student perceptions of readability and interest levels in two upper-level college composition texts varied from the Flesch and the Fry readability and human interest formulas. (SR)

A study analyzed the readability of seven central Florida newspapers (one of which is a college newspaper) and "USA Today.""Rightwriter," a grammar checker and readability computer program, was used to evaluate front page articles for each of the eight newspapers. The readability formulas invoked in the readability program…

Reviews formulas and related predictive devices that tell whether a particular piece of writing is likely to be readable to a particular group of readers. (RB)

Ten introductory textbooks on mental retardation were analyzed with the Flesch formula for reading ease and interest. All texts fell in the "difficult, college level" category for complexity, but seven were classified as "dull" and three "mildly interesting." Most included adequate organizational aids, and agreement…

This paper describes and reports on the performance of six related artificial neural networks that have been developed for the purpose of readability analysis. Two networks employ counts of linguistic variables that simulate a traditional regression-based approach to readability. The remaining networks determine readability from "visual…

The Fry Readability Formula was employed to determine the reading grade levels of the eight most popular college U.S. history survey textbooks and the ten most popular Western civilization textbooks. It was discovered that the Fry readability technique could not produce consistently close findings on any single college history textbook. Indeed,…

Validity, the most critical of readability formula characteristics, requires that a measuring device actually measure what is intended to be measured. To examine validity, a study was conducted in which ten popular handbooks used in the teaching of college freshman composition were examined for comparative validity data--the extent to which scores…

This document discusses the measurement of reading ability and the readability of books by application of the Lexile framework. It begins by stating the importance of uniform measures. It then discusses the history of reading ability testing, based on the assumption that no researcher has been able to measure more than one kind of reading ability.…

Proposition analysis was used to equate the text base of two essays with different readability levels. Easier reading essays were given higher scores than difficult reading essays. The results appear to identify another noncontent influence on essay test scores, leaving increasingly less variance for differences in content. (Author/PN)

The Flesch reading formula is questioned as being appropriate for evaluating college economics textbooks. The Dale-Chall, Modified Dale-Chall, Fry, and Flesch formulas were used to evaluate nine introductory textbooks. There was little or no consistency in either the absolute reading levels or the rank orderings. (Author/AM)