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== Definition ==
Different definitions of readability exist from various sources. The term "readability" is '''inherently broad''' and can become confusing when examining all of the possible definitions.<ref name="DaleChall3">Dale, Edgar and Jeanne S. Chall. 1949. "The concept of readability." ''Elementary English'' 26:23.</ref> Readability is a concept that involves '''audience, content, quality, legibility,''' and can even involve the '''formatting''' and '''design structure''' of any given text.<ref name="Harris19953">Harris, Theodore L. and Richard E. Hodges, eds. 1995. ''The Literacy Dictionary, The Vocabulary of Reading and Writing.'' Newark, DE: International Reading Assn.</ref> Therefore, the definition can fluctuate based on the type of audience to whom one is presenting a certain type of content to. For example, a technical writer might focus on clear and concise language and formatting that allows easy-reading. In contrast, a scholarly journal would use sophisticated writing that would appeal and make sense to the type of audience to whom they are directing information to.
== Applications ==
Readability is essential to the '''clarity''' and '''accessibility''' of texts used in classrooms, work environments, and everyday life. The government prioritizes readability as well through Plain Language Laws which enforces important documents to be written at an 8th grade level.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fusaro |first=Joseph A. |date=September 1988 |title=Applying statistical rigor to a validation study of the fry readability graph |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19388078809557957 |journal=Reading Research and Instruction |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=44–48 |doi=10.1080/19388078809557957 |issn=0886-0246}}</ref>
Much research has focused on matching prose to reading skill, resulting in formulas for use in research, government, teaching, publishing, the military, medicine, and business.<ref name="Fryuse">Fry, E. B. 1986. ''Varied uses of readability measurement.'' Paper presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the International Reading Association, Philadelphia, PA.</ref><ref name="Rabin">Rabin, A. T. 1988 "Determining difficulty levels of text written in languages other than English." In ''Readability: Its past, present, and future,'' eds. B. L. Zakaluk and S. J. Samuels. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.</ref>
In 1947, Donald Murphy of ''Wallace's Farmer'' used a split-run<ref name="Murphy2">Murphy, D. 1947. "How plain talk increases readership 45% to 60%." ''Printer's ink.'' 220:35–37.</ref> edition to study the effects of making text easier to read. He found that reducing from the 9th to the 6th-grade reading level increased readership by 43% for an article about 'nylon'. He also found a 60% increase in readership for an article on corn, with better responses from people under 35.<ref name="Murphy2" />The result was a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000.
Wilber Schramm, who directed the Communications Research program at the University of Illinois interviewed 1,050 newspaper readers in 1947. He found that an easier reading style helps to determine how much of an article is read. This was called '''reading persistence, depth, or perseverance'''. He also found that people will read less of long articles than of short ones, for example, a story nine paragraphs long will lose 3 out of 10 readers by the fifth paragraph. In contrast, a shorter story will lose only 2 out of 10 readers.<ref name="Schramm">Schramm, W. 1947. "Measuring another dimension of newspaper readership." ''Journalism quarterly'' 24:293–306.</ref>
A study in 1947 by Melvin Lostutter showed that newspapers were generally written at a level five years above the ability of average American adult readers. The reading ease of newspaper articles was not found to have much connection with the education, experience, or personal interest of the journalists writing the stories. It instead had more to do with the convention and culture of the industry. Lostutter argued for more readability testing in newspaper writing. Improved readability must be a "conscious process somewhat independent of the education and experience of the staffs ''writers.''"''<ref name="Lostutter">Lostutter, M. 1947. "Some critical factors in newspaper readability." ''Journalism quarterly'' 24:307–314.</ref>''
==Artificial Intelligence (AI) Approach==
Unlike the traditional readability formulas, [[AI|artificial intelligence]] approaches to readability assessment (also known as '''Automatic Readability Assessment''') incorporate myriad linguistic features and construct statistical prediction models to predict text readability.<ref name="Text Readability Assessment for Sec">{{cite journal |last1=Xia |first1=Menglin |last2=Kochmar |first2=Ekaterina |last3=Briscoe |first3=Ted |date=June 2016 |title=Text Readability Assessment for Second Language Learners |url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W16-0502 |journal=Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications |pages=12–22 |arxiv=1906.07580 |doi=10.18653/v1/W16-0502 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="aclweb.org">{{cite journal |last1=Lee |first1=Bruce W. |last2=Lee |first2=Jason |title=LXPER Index 2.0: Improving Text Readability Assessment Model for L2 English Students in Korea |journal=Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Natural Language Processing Techniques for Educational Applications |date=Dec 2020 |pages=20–24 |arxiv=2010.13374 |url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.nlptea-1.3}}</ref> These approaches typically consist of three steps: 1. a training corpus of individual texts, 2. a set of linguistic features to be computed from each text, and 3. a [[machine learning]] model to predict the readability, using the computed linguistic feature values.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Feng |first1=Lijun |last2=Jansche |first2=Martin |last3=Huernerfauth |first3=Matt |last4=Elhadad |first4=Noémie |title=A Comparison of Features for Automatic Readability Assessment |journal=Coling 2010: Posters |date=August 2010 |pages=276–284 |url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/C10-2032}}</ref><ref name="On Improving the Accuracy of Readab">{{cite journal |last1=Vajjala |first1=Sowmya |last2=Meurers |first2=Detmar |title=On Improving the Accuracy of Readability Classification using Insights from Second Language Acquisition |journal=Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using NLP |date=June 2012 |pages=163–173 |url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W12-2019}}</ref><ref name="aclweb.org"/>
===Corpora===
Writing for a class of readers other than one's own is very difficult. It takes training, method, and practice.<ref name="FleschArt2">Flesch, R. 1946. ''The art of plain talk.'' New York: Harper.</ref> Among those who are good at this are writers of novels and children's books. The writing experts all advise that, besides using a formula, observe all the norms of good writing, which are essential for writing readable texts. Writers should study the texts used by their audience and their reading habits.<ref name="FleschPlain2">Flesch, R. 1979. ''How to write in plain English: A book for lawyers and consumers''. New York: Harpers.</ref> This means that for a 5th-grade audience, the writer should study and learn good quality 5th-grade materials.<ref name="KlareEnglish2">Klare, G. R. 1980. ''How to write readable English.'' London: Hutchinson.</ref><ref name="Frywriting2">Fry, E. B. 1988. "Writeability: the principles of writing for increased comprehension." In ''Readability: Its past, present, and future'', eds. B. I. Zakaluk and S. J. Samuels. Newark, DE: International Reading Assn.</ref>
== Readability of Wikipedia ==
{{See also|Health_information_on_Wikipedia#Readability}}
{{See also|Criticism_of_Wikipedia#Quality_of_writing|Help:How to write a readable article}}One study found that large language models might be able to improve readability.<ref>{{cite arXiv|eprint=2308.10410 |last1=Gao |first1=Fan |last2=Jiang |first2=Hang |last3=Blum |first3=Moritz |last4=Lu |first4=Jinghui |last5=Liu |first5=Dairui |last6=Jiang |first6=Yuang |last7=Li |first7=Irene |title=Large Language Models on Wikipedia-Style Survey Generation: An Evaluation in NLP Concepts |date=2023 |class=cs.CL }}</ref> General [https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Understanding_perception_of_readability_in_Wikipedia research] is ongoing.
==See also==
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