From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linsear Write
is a
readability metric
for English text, purportedly developed for the
United States Air Force
to help them calculate the readability of their technical manuals.
[1]
It is one of many such readability metrics, but is specifically designed to calculate the United States grade level of a text sample based on sentence length and the number of words used that have three or more
syllables
.
[2]
It is similar to the
Fry readability formula
.
Algorithm
[
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]
The standard Linsear Write metric
Lw
runs on a 100-word sample:
[3]
- For each "easy word", defined as words with 2 syllables or less, add 1 point.
- For each "hard word", defined as words with 3 syllables or more, add 3 points.
- Divide the points by the number of sentences in the 100-word sample.
- Adjust the provisional result
r
:
- If
r
> 20,
Lw
=
r
/ 2.
- If
r
≤ 20,
Lw
=
r
/ 2 - 1.
The result is a "grade level" measure, reflecting the estimated years of education needed to read the text fluently.
History
[
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]
The idea behind the metric goes back to government employee John O'Hayre's 1966 manual, titled
Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go
. In his style manual, O'Hayre proposed a metric that considers shorter sentences and shorter words easier to read: in a 100-word sample, each one-syllable word (with the exception of some
stop words
) is worth one point, and each sentence (semicolon or period) is worth 3 points. The higher the score, the better.
[4]
At some later point in time the metric was developed into a full Linsear Write Index.
[5]
External links
[
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]
- koRpus
, a package for
R
, the Linsear Write formula is included in its functions
readability()
and
readability.num()
.
- textstat
, a Python module that has a Linsear Write method to calculate the grade level for text. An example:
textstat.textstat.textstat.linsear_write_formula(text)
References
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]