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--- Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> wrote:
> For these parameters to be meaningful, you must
> prove that two separate assertions are reasonable:
> that longer words are always more difficult to
> understand than shorter words, and that longer
> sentences are always harder to understand than
> shorter sentences.
what about:
Given two texts, one of which is judged (by means
other than readability formulae) to be more difficult
than the other, the following statements would have to
be true:
- The proportion of longer words is greater in the
more difficult text than in the easier one.
- The proportion of longer sentences is greater in the
more difficult text than in the easier one.
(Hmmm... I think I could have written that a bit more
economically, but my brain's a bit tired at this
hour.)
I'm not sure how we would handle the relative length
of these texts; should they be of equal length --
something not too short for the advanced audience but
not too long for the less advanced audience? They'd
have to be long enough to provide a reasonable sample.
Ultimately, it's texts that readability formulae work
on, not individual words or sentences. I think
therefore that our test of the formulae should use texts.
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