Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
16 results found in Readability.
- Automated Readability Scoring (ARSS, Automated Readability Scoring System, Readability Assessment)
- The use of computational methods to automatically evaluate the reading difficulty level of a text. Traditional readability formulas like Flesch-Kincaid and Dale-Chall use surface features such as aver…
- Automatic Readability Assessment (Readability Prediction, Reading Level Assessment)
- The computational task of predicting how difficult a text is for a reader, usually expressed as a grade level or a readability score. Modern systems treat readability as a machine-learning classificat…
- Coh-Metrix
- A web-based tool developed at the University of Memphis that analyses text on more than a hundred measures of language, cohesion, and readability, including referential and semantic cohesion, lexical …
- Dale-Chall Readability Formula (Dale-Chall, New Dale-Chall)
- A readability formula first published by Edgar Dale and Jeanne Chall in 1948 and revised in 1995. Unlike formulas that rely only on surface counts, Dale-Chall compares every word in a text against a m…
- Entity Density (Entity-Density Features)
- A discourse-level readability feature measuring how many distinct entities — named entities (people, places, organisations) and general nouns — a text introduces per sentence or document. High entity …
- Entity Grid (Entity-Grid Model)
- A model of local text coherence proposed by Barzilay and Lapata (2008) that represents a document as a two-dimensional grid: rows are sentences, columns are salient entities, and each cell records the…
- Gunning Fog Index (Gunning FOG, FOG Index)
- A traditional readability formula developed by Robert Gunning in 1952 that estimates the years of formal education a reader needs to understand a text on first reading. It is calculated from average s…
- Lexical Chain (Lexical Chaining, Lexical Cohesion)
- A sequence of semantically related words running through a text — for example, "doctor", "hospital", "nurse", "patient" — connected by relations like synonymy, hypernymy, or hyponymy. Lexical chains c…
- Lexile Framework (Lexile, Lexile Measure)
- A commercial readability framework developed by MetaMetrics that places both texts and readers on a common scale — the Lexile measure — to support matching readers with materials at an appropriate lev…
- Lexile Score (Lexile Measure, Lexile Level)
- A standardised measure of text complexity and reading ability, expressed on the Lexile scale (roughly 0L to 1600L+). A Lexile text measure reflects sentence length and word frequency; a Lexile reader …
- Readability formula (readability metric, readability index, readability measure)
- A mathematical formula that estimates the difficulty of reading a text, typically based on features like sentence length, word length, syllable count, or vocabulary frequency. Common formulas include …
- Reading Fluency
- The ability to read connected text accurately, at an appropriate pace, and with proper expression - distinct from word-level decoding skill on one side and from reading comprehension on the other. Flu…
- Reading Level (Grade Level, Reading Grade Level)
- An estimate of the education or skill level a reader needs to understand a text, usually expressed as a U.S. school grade (e.g., grade 4) or an equivalent band. Reading level is the target output of m…
- SMOG (SMOG Index, SMOG Grade, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook)
- A readability formula developed by G. Harry McLaughlin in 1969 that estimates the years of education needed to understand a text, based on the number of polysyllabic words (three or more syllables) in…
- Speed-Comprehension Trade-off (Speed-Accuracy Trade-off in Reading)
- An empirical pattern in readability research: typographic, layout, and presentation choices that increase reading speed often reduce comprehension accuracy, and vice versa. For example, sans-serif fac…
- Typeface Classification (Font Classification, Typeface Categories)
- The set of broad categories used to describe and compare typefaces. The most common groupings are: serif (letters with small projecting strokes at terminals, e.g. Times, Roboto Serif), sans-serif (no …