Definition
Readability has been defined in various ways, e.g. by: The Literacy Dictionary, Jeanne Chall and Edgar Dale, G. Harry McLaughlin, William DuBay.
Easy reading helps learning and enjoyment. So what we write should be easy to understand.
While many writers and speakers since ancient times have used plain language, in the 20th century there was much more focus on reading ease. Much of the research has focused on matching texts to people's reading skills. This has used many successful formulas: in research, government, teaching, publishing, the army, doctors, and business. Many people, and in many languages, have been helped by this. By the year 2000, there were over 1,000 studies on readability formulas in professional journals about their validity and merit.The study of reading is not just in teaching. Research has shown that much money is wasted by companies in making texts hard for the average reader to read.
There are summaries of this research, see the links in this section. Many text books on reading include pointers to readability.
Read more about this topic: Readability
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“... we all know the wag’s definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)