battle@alphard.cs.utk.edu (David Battle) (12/31/89)
I recently discovered a command on my workstation which I had previously
been unaware of. It it on a DECStation 3100 (Ultrix) and it is called
"style". What I would like to know is what are the supposed meanings of
the various "readability grades"? Is higher better? What is the maximum
possible grade? What criteria are used? Here is some sample output.
Can someone explain what this means?
readability grades:
(Kincaid) 13.9 (auto) 15.0 (Coleman-Liau) 13.2 (Flesch) 14.7 (38.9)
sentence info:
no. sent 13 no. wds 319
av sent leng 24.5 av word leng 5.13
no. questions 0 no. imperatives 0
no. nonfunc wds 189 59.2% av leng 6.80
short sent (<20) 38% (5) long sent (>35) 31% (4)
longest sent 43 wds at sent 11; shortest sent 9 wds at sent 6
sentence types:
simple 54% (7) complex 8% (1)
compound 31% (4) compound-complex 8% (1)
word usage:
verb types as % of total verbs
tobe 41% (12) aux 28% (8) inf 34% (10)
passives as % of non-inf verbs 26% (5)
types as % of total
prep 14.4% (46) conj 4.1% (13) adv 3.1% (10)
noun 26.3% (84) adj 21.3% (68) pron 2.5% (8)
nominalizations 4 % (12)
sentence beginnings:
subject opener: noun (2) pron (3) pos (0) adj (2) art (3) tot 77%
prep 23% (3) adv 0% (0)
verb 0% (0) sub_conj 0% (0) conj 0% (0)
expletives 0% (0)
-David L. Battle
battle@battle.esd.ornl.gov
battle@utkux1.utk.edu
battle@utkvx2.BITNETsamlb@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Sam Bassett RCD) (12/31/89)
Readabilty grades usually are supposed to be a measure of how
many years of schooling one would need to understand the text, so the
numbers you got indicate that someone would have to be at least a sophomore
in college to understand whatever it was that you ran through 'style'.
The longer the words and sentences are, the harder (according to
the theories, anyway) it is to understand them. The ideal is a high
school sophmore, I think -- 10/11, while a lot of writing has to be
pitched for no more than 6th grade to be generally understood.
The other numbers struck me as being pretty good -- the indicated
that you write clear, active sentences, without much passive voice.
=========================================
I ran the above through 'style', and got:
Script started on Sat Dec 30 23:02:39 1989
readability grades:
(Kincaid) 14.0 (auto) 14.7 (Coleman-Liau) 9.8 (Flesch) 13.4 (47.6)
sentence info:
no. sent 4 no. wds 119
av sent leng 29.8 av word leng 4.52
no. questions 0 no. imperatives 0
no. nonfunc wds 62 52.1% av leng 5.92
short sent (<25) 50% (2) long sent (>40) 25% (1)
longest sent 50 wds at sent 1; shortest sent 19 wds at sent 2
sentence types:
simple 25% (1) complex 75% (3)
compound 0% (0) compound-complex 0% (0)
word usage:
verb types as % of total verbs
tobe 30% (6) aux 10% (2) inf 35% (7)
passives as % of non-inf verbs 8% (1)
types as % of total
prep 7.6% (9) conj 1.7% (2) adv 4.2% (5)
noun 21.8% (26) adj 11.8% (14) pron 10.1% (12)
nominalizations 0 % (0)
sentence beginnings:
subject opener: noun (0) pron (0) pos (0) adj (1) art (3) tot 100%
prep 0% (0) adv 0% (0)
verb 0% (0) sub_conj 0% (0) conj 0% (0)
expletives 0% (0)
Evidently, I write a little simpler than thou! ;-)
Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792; Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb@well.sf.ca.us samlb@ames.arc.nasa.gov
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'rowland@hpavla.HP.COM (Fred Rowland) (01/02/90)
> I recently discovered a command on my workstation which I had previously > been unaware of. It it on a DECStation 3100 (Ultrix) and it is called > "style". What I would like to know is what are the supposed meanings of > the various "readability grades"? Is higher better? What is the maximum > possible grade? What criteria are used? Here is some sample output. > Can someone explain what this means? > readability grades: (Kincaid) 13.9 (auto) 15.0 (Coleman-Liau) 13.2 (Flesch) 14.7 (38.9) > . . . > David L. Battle There's a complete writeup of 'style' and its companion programs 'diction' and 'explain' in an article Writing Tools - The STYLE and DICTION Programs L. L. Cherry and W. Vesterman dated November 22, 1980. Unfortunately, my copy doesn't include the name of the journal, but I'd say there's a good chance that it was Communications of the ACM. Good luck! Briefly, the different readability scores are based on different formulae derived by different people using different types of test reading material. Kincaid is based on Navy training manuals ranging from 5.5 to 16.3 in reading grade level. ARI is based on text from grades 0 to 7. Coleman-Liau is based on texts ranging from .4 to 16.3. Flesch is based on grade school text, years 3 to 12. This quote may sum up what you need "Coke (private communication) found that the Kincaid Formula is probably the best predictor for technical documents; both ARI and Flesch tend to overestimate the difficulty; Coleman-Liau tends to underestimate." But try to find the full article; there's some good reading there. Fred Rowland Avondale Division/Hewlett-Packard
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (01/03/90)
In article <920004@hpavla.HP.COM>, rowland@hpavla.HP.COM (Fred Rowland) writes: > There's a complete writeup of 'style' and its companion programs 'diction' > and 'explain' in an article > > Writing Tools - The STYLE and DICTION Programs > > L. L. Cherry and W. Vesterman > > dated November 22, 1980. Unfortunately, my copy doesn't include the name > of the journal, but I'd say there's a good chance that it was Communications > of the ACM. Good luck! You probably don't have to dig through any journals to find the article. The BSD and Ultrix source tapes both have it on-line in the /usr/doc directory. On BSD systems, it's in /usr/doc/usd/32.diction, and on Ultrix systems (at least according to the Ultrix3.0 sources), it's in /usr/doc/diction. The document is the same on both systems, and you should be able to format and print it by cd'ing into the appropriate directory and typing "tbl rm0 rm1 rm2 | troff -ms" (if troff doesn't work on your system, use whatever form of roff does). I would offer to send it to you if you don't have it, but I'm not sure if it's freely redistributable, since there is no copyright indicating that in the source files, and it doesn't seem to be available for anonymous ftp on uunet.uu.net in the bsd-sources directory. Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-4261 Home: 617-782-0710
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (01/03/90)
In article <1990Jan3.020230.14354@athena.mit.edu>, I write: > ... you should be able to > format and print it by cd'ing into the appropriate directory and typing > "tbl rm0 rm1 rm2 | troff -ms" (if troff doesn't work on your system, use > whatever form of roff does). There are some equations in the document which I didn't notice until after sending my first message, so you'll have to run the files through eqn before running them through eqn before running them through tbl and troff. The correct command would be "eqn rm0 rm1 rm2 | tbl | troff -ms". Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-4261 Home: 617-782-0710
rouben@math9.math.umbc.edu (Rouben Rostamian) (01/03/90)
In article <920004@hpavla.HP.COM> rowland@hpavla.HP.COM (Fred Rowland) writes: >> I recently discovered a command on my workstation which I had previously >> been unaware of. It it on a DECStation 3100 (Ultrix) and it is called >> "style". What I would like to know is what are the supposed meanings of >> the various "readability grades"? >> ... >> David L. Battle > >There's a complete writeup of 'style' and its companion programs 'diction' >and 'explain' in an article > > Writing Tools - The STYLE and DICTION Programs > > L. L. Cherry and W. Vesterman > >dated November 22, 1980. Unfortunately, my copy doesn't include the name >of the journal, but I'd say there's a good chance that it was Communications >of the ACM. Good luck! >... >Fred Rowland The article mentioned above is bundled with the volume "ULTRIX-32 Supplementary Documents, Vol. 1, General Users". This volume, available from DEC (order number AA-BG66A-TE) contains an excellent hodge-podge of articles written by the fathers (and Mothers) of UNIX -- Ritchie, Thompson, Kernighan, Joy, Bourne, et. al. -- a highly stimulating reading for those who need to "hear it from the horse's mouth." An article by Bourne is titled simply "An Introduction to the UNIX shell"; obviously predating the babel of UNIX shells that we deal with nowadays. In the credits section of the volume there is a note that the document "Writing tools - the STYLE and DICTION Programs" is copyrighted 1979 by AT&T Bell Laboratories. No additional publication information is given there. -- Rouben Rostamian Telephone: (301) 455-2458 Department of Mathematics and Statistics e-mail: University of Maryland Baltimore County rostamian@umbc.bitnet Baltimore, MD 21228 rostamian@umbc3.umbc.edu