A FORMULA FOR PREDICTING READABILITY 论文

摘要

EVERAL months ago editor of Wall Street Journal ran a full-page advertisement in one of leading literary magazines, announcing two honors recently awarded to it. One of these honors was a statement made by Robert P. Gunning that Wall Street Journal had the readable front page in country. How did Mr. Gunning come to this conclusion? Did he actually sample a cross section of readers, have them read front pages of leading newspapers, and then compare their ability to read and understand various front pages? No. He used an accepted short cut. He predicted reading difficulty of various front pages by using a readability formula and found that Wall Street Journal was most readable.