agray@jarthur.claremont.edu (Andy Gray) (11/30/90)
This article contains a brief questionnaire for a research project that I am doing on text readability analysis. If you do any sort of writing on a computer, I would appreciate it if you would respond to it. To respond to this survey, please send a mail message with the word "survey" in the subject line. Note that you may be able to respond directly from your newsreader; consult your site administrator if you are unclear on how to do this. Please send completed surveys to any of the following E-mail addresses: agray@jarthur.claremont.edu agray@jarthur.uucp ...!uunet!jarthur!agray agray@hmcvax.bitnet The body of the message should contain 5 lines, with one response per line. A sample response to this survey would look like this: To: agray@jarthur.claremont.edu Subject: Readability survey 3 Grammatik - IBM PC 4 1 4 I would appreciate receiving responses by Saturday, December 8. The questions follow... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. How often do you use, or have you ever used, text readability software, such as Grammatik on MS-DOS and Macintosh computers or style(1) on UNIX machines, to analyze text that you write? 0 Never have used 1 Rarely use 2 Occasionally use 3 Sometimes use 4 Often use 5 Almost always use 2. If yes, what is the name of the text readability software that you use and what computer system do you run it on? (If no, please leave this line blank.) 3. How useful do you think text readability software is for improving writing? 1 Not at all useful 2 Barely useful 3 Somewhat useful 4 Very useful 5 Essential 0 No basis for judgement 4. Which of the following do you feel describes your current profession most closely? 1 Student 2 Educator 3 Other professional 5. Which of the following best reflects your major field of study or work? 1 Sciences/Mathematics/Engineering 2 Business 3 Education 4 Liberal Arts 5 Other (please specify) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for taking the time to respond to this survey. Questions regarding this survey may be sent to me at any of the E-mail addresses listed above. If you would like to receive a summary of the results of this survey, send a message to any of the above addresses with the word "results" in the subject line. Thanks, Andy ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andy Gray agray@jarthur.claremont.edu Platt Campus Center agray@jarthur.UUCP Harvey Mudd College ...uunet!jarthur!agray Claremont, CA 91711 agray@HMCVAX.BITNET
bathurst@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Bruce Bathurst) (12/01/90)
Mr. Gray, I`ll answer your questionnaire tonight. Though I feel I write adequately, I yearn for tools of the quality of the AT&T Writer's Workbench. Grammatik I've avoided because it appears designed for the business community, and their prose is not something I aspire to. There is a program that suits the need expressed in your earlier letter. It's called 'style' and should be on your UNIX system. Style returns 4 different readability indices: the Kincaid Formula, the Automated Readability Index, the Coleman-Liau index, and the Flesch Reading Grade Level. Style is part of the Writer's Workbench, which includes 33 other useful commands. 'Diction', which finds wordy sentences, is the other Workbench command commonly found on UNIX systems. A good discussion of the complete Writer's Workbench occupies all of Chapter 8 in R.S. Tare's UNIX Utilities, published by McGraw-Hill in 1987. The Writer's Workbench was a huge effort by scholars, and its completion was heralded as quite an intellectual accomplishment. What has happened to it? Does no one care to write well? One thing is certain: the purpose of the Workbench is linquistic analyses; it will never be a 'hot item' with the Fortune 50 companies. So why doesn't AT&T donate it to universities? If anyone knows of MS-DOS versions of any of the 34 Writer's Workbench commands, please let us know! Thanks! Bruce Bathurst Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst