Investigates the effectiveness of the prose communication in contemporary corporate annual reports. Indicates that a sample of 65 Canadian annual reports for 1984 were classified as "difficult" to "very difficult" and beyond the fluent comprehension ease of 92 percent of the adult population and 56 percent of the investor…

Norms for Air Force technical training materials were developed for seven previously developed structure-of-intellect and seven psycholinguistically oriented variables which have been used to assess the readability/comprehensibility of textual materials. Separate norms are presented for Air Force study guides, manuals, career development course…

Writers and writing teachers should be wary of depending on readability indexes as indicators of the difficulty of written messages. The Gunning Fog Index and the Damerst Clear Index, two readability formulas, were used to determine the readability of "A Statement of Editorial Policy" and two abstracts appearing in an issue of…

A study was conducted to determine if increasing the redundancy of sections in scientific articles where typical readers became bored or confused would have a desirable effect on other readers. Undergraduate journalism students applied R. F. Carter's signalled stopping technique to two different science articles by indicating points where they…

Identifies both text-based and reader-based characteristics that make health education material difficult for patients to understand. Finds that technical words, complex sentences, and unusual phrases increase the difficulty of comprehension, as does information that contradicts readers' common sense notions. (RS)

Misleading headings in documents, which make it hard for readers to find what they need, are common in many types of documents. A review of research on the importance of cues in the reading process suggests that heading miscues might seriously impair understanding. Three experiments were conducted to discover how headings cue or miscue adult…

A study of the reading rate and comprehension of 10 aerospace engineers and analysis of the readability of sample company communications were undertaken. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test comprehension scores for the engineers, when compared with scores of a norm group provided by the Nelson-Denny Test Manual, were nearly the same in mean and standard…

This technical memorandum presents an outline of how to apply psycholinguistic and intellective concepts in order to enhance the readability and comprehensibility of written materials. Guidelines for making the reader's task easier are provided, and some readability measurement procedures are also discussed. The contents include: "Increasing…

Comments on the rationale and methodology of the textual cue experiments of L. T. Frase and B. J. Schwartz (see EJ 203 980) and describes two studies that attempted to replicate and extend their findings using a different methodology. (Author/GT)

Describes two studies on the comprehension of pharmaceutical text containing pictorial and written instructions by mothers in rural Kenya. Comprehension of printed instructions was compared with interpretation of illustrations, propositional analysis used in the study is explained, recall protocols are examined, and implications of writing…

Proposes that readability formulas cannot predict text difficulty. Presents results of an experiment designed to demonstrate that "text difficulty" is determined by individual differences (perception) and not by the objective qualities of a text. (NH)

A previous report defined a series of 14 novel measures for determining the comprehensibility of English text on the basis of current psycholinguistic and Structure-of-Intellect concepts. That report not only suggested the potential usefulness of the measures but also conjectured about the feasibility of automating the calculation of these…

Claims that complex noun phrases in technical writing materials present major comprehension difficulties for a variety of readers. Establishes methods for paraphrasing complex noun phrases into shorter and simpler structures. Applies principles outlined to a short legal text. (HB)

Eighteen naval fire technicians served as subjects in a study using scenarios to simulate a real world task for assessing the readability of general technical texts. The scenario asked subjects to read a segment of text and to explain to a colleague how the particular component described in the passage functioned. Subjects' summaries were assessed…

In a study of the readability of Air Force regulations, the writer-estimated reading grade level (RGL) for each regulation was rechecked by using the FORCAST readability formula. In four of the seven cases, the regulation writers underestimated the RGL of their regulation by more than one grade level. None of the writers produced a document with…