readability
Sign in to saveReadability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. The concept exists in both natural language and programming languages, though in different forms. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects that affect legibility, like font size, line height, character spacing, and line length). In programming, things such as programmer comments, choice of loop structure, and choice of names can determine the ease with which humans can read computer program code.
~35 min read
Article
25 sectionsContents
- Definition
- Applications
- History
- Early research
- Reading ease
- Readability studies
- Readership formula adoption
- Formula refinement and variants
- Measuring coherence and organization
- Artificial intelligence
- Readability formulas
- Gray and Leary
- Flesch formulas
- Dale–Chall formula
- Gunning fog formula
- Fry readability graph
- McLaughlin's SMOG formula
- FORCAST formula
- Golub Syntactic Density Score
- Lexico-semantic
- Readability formula accuracy
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. The concept exists in both natural language and programming languages, though in different forms. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects that affect legibility, like font size, line height, character spacing, and line length). In programming, things such as programmer comments, choice of loop structure, and choice of names can determine the ease with which humans can read computer program code.
Higher readability in a text eases reading effort and speed for the general population of readers. For those who do not have high reading comprehension, readability is necessary for understanding and applying a given text. Techniques to simplify readability are essential to communicate a set of information to the intended audience.