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Ah, Geoff, I see I've unwittingly stumbled upon an issue that may be a
pet peeve of yours. Or, if more fairly put, at least one on which you
have some long-held and perhaps well-settled convictions.
That's fine. The article to which you refer, I believe -- http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.rbainformationdesign.com
.au/Readability%2520Formulas.pdf -- makes some very valid points. They
should certainly be taken into account. And remember I said at the
outset that "slavish" adherence to such a tool as a readability index is
not wise. It is interesting to note that even the aforementioned
article's conclusions include this thought: "If a document that was not
created with a readability formula in mind gets a very poor score, it
almost certainly needs to be reorganized, rethought, and rewritten." And
quite correctly adds that even a good readability score does not
guarantee a good document.
Nonetheless, I still think your dismissal is too sweeping. I'm not sure
that a tool can be tossed out for failing to measure what it's designed
to measure when someone intentionally creates gibberish. After all, what
we're about here is intending to communicate with clarity -- not the
reverse. If someone unintentionally creates gibberish, well then, as
we've said, a formula-driven mechanical tool is no substitute for a
judicious human who is writing and editing. Lest you be constructing a
straw man here, we're not proposing "to rely solely upon a mechanical
count of sentence and word lengths." I agree with Jean Hollis Weber's
comments to the opposite effect after excerpting your dialogue on this
issue a few years back (cf. http://www.jeanweber.com/news/tenews29.htm#readable): "No one suggested
those metrics should be the only criteria of a quality document."
I also tend to agree with Chuck Schulz's assessment: "It is not
surprising that simple indexes based on word length and sentence length
are related to reading difficulty. But the indexes tell only part of the
story. Interesting material, vivid language, familiar references,
personal references, quotations, white space, effective organization,
and credibility all contribute to reading ease. In addition, a reading
index can be tricked by following the formula without attending to the
other factors just mentioned."
(http://www.ipmaac.org/acn/apr98/reading.html). Chuck appears to have
been commenting about material for non-technical audiences, so the
allusion is not completely apt, but it's intuitive, I believe, that
shorter words and simpler sentences, **all things being equal**, do
improve readability. "Economy of expression is the hallmark of the
artist," as the old adage goes. Of course, all things are not always
equal, and sometimes it takes a few exceedingly complex sentences to
convey a technical nuance. But I for one wasn't arguing THAT point.
The author(s) of this article
(http://www.gopdg.com/plainlanguage/readability.html) speak directly to
your assertion about usefulness. Readability tests' "primary advantage
is they can serve as an early warning system to let the writer know that
the writing is too dense." Not an infallible proof that the writing is
unreadable. Not even a definitive indicator that text should be revised.
But a red flag, at very least. It also speaks to your unaddressed
in-between case: the writing that isn't clear and doesn't have a good
readability score.
As for moving beyond what seems intuitive to your causal correlation
contention, I'll refer you to a comment concerning a fairly technical
readership in the article titled "Effects of Peer Review and Editing on
the Readability of Articles Published in Annals of Internal Medicine."
(http://www.ama-assn.org/public/peer/7_13_94/pv3083x.htm). The doctors
note: "The most commonly used and well-validated readability formulas
are those of Gunning[5] and Flesch[6] ....Although neither index is an
ideal measure of readability, comprehension, or readership, both have
been studied many times for reliability and validity (using measures of
reading speed, expert judgment, readership, and comprehension, with
correlations ranging from .62 to .90).[3,4]"
The doctors note the validity of readability indices for technical
writing fields outside psychology had not, at least as of that writing
(1994), had much research. Nor do I intend to embark on a more extensive
literature review. But neither am I ready to so completely discount any
correlation between readibility tools and comprehension. One of the
doctors' closing points is telling, and it speaks to the point that
indices such as these are but a single tool in our box. "Content,
format, logical organization, redundancy, and reader motivation" are
also crucial. We agree, I think, that these are factors no readibility
tool can address.
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Hart [mailto:ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca]
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 11:11 AM
To: TECHWR-L; Pinkham, Jim
Cc: VERKERKEN Wouter
Subject: MS Word readability index? (take II)
Jim Pinkham notes: <<While I have no doubt there are professional
educators who could and would take valid issue with that kind of
sweeping dismissal...>>
They're welcome to do so, but the facts don't lie: a test that cannot
distinguish between gibberish and valid text is not a useful text.
Period. More convincingly still, the Tech. Comm. article I mentioned
provided no evidence of any correlation between readability indices and
reading comprehension in its literature review.
For the abovementioned editors to make a valid point, they need to cite
studies that show such a correlation. Moreover, that correlation must be
for text that has been edited to ensure that the quality of the text
(rather than the mechanial statistics) is not a confounding factor. They
must also rebut the reductio ad absurdum example of gibberish text or
reversed word orders... which is not possible if you rely on a solely
mechanical count of word and sentence lengths.
<<Both the infamous MS grammar checker and the Flesch readability index
can be tools. As such, they can aid and abet the writer who judiciously
uses them>>
_How_ can they help? If a sentence is eminently clear and readable
despite having a high Flesch index, what purpose would revising the
sentence serve? Conversely, if the sentence is unclear despite having a
low Flesch index, what purpose would accepting the sentence serve.
For readability indices to be useful, they must show a high and
significant correlation with reading comprehension. In the absence of
any such correlation, they're a waste of time and potentially
misleading. Recall the old cliche about "lies, damned lies, and
statistics"?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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