Readability - Text Leveling

The earliest method of assessing the reading ease of texts is the subjective judgment termed text leveling. Formulas do not fully address the various content, purpose, design, visual input, and organization of a text.

Text leveling is commonly used to rank the reading ease of texts in areas where reading difficulties are easy to identify such as books for young children. At higher levels ranking the reading ease of texts becomes more difficult, as the reading difficulties become harder to identify. For this reason, better ways to assess reading ease were developed.