Software to check reading level of Web pages?

I tend to write fairly involved sentences, which is not always a
good thing, and lately I've been wondering if there's some sort of
software I could run, or a Web site where I could submit a URL, and
have it rate the reading level of the page, preferably pointing out
the spots that have contributed most to the difficulty, so that I
could simplify my prose where called for; does anyone know of such?

(Yes, I made that all one sentence on purpose. :-) But I really
would like to know if such a thing exists.)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
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In article <MPG.1a7665f96ca055fd98bc90 (AT) news (DOT) odyssey.net>,
the_stan_brown (AT) fastmail (DOT) fm enlightened us with...

I tend to write fairly involved sentences, which is not always a
good thing, and lately I've been wondering if there's some sort of
software I could run, or a Web site where I could submit a URL, and
have it rate the reading level of the page, preferably pointing out
the spots that have contributed most to the difficulty, so that I
could simplify my prose where called for; does anyone know of such?

I truly doubt it, since entire English classes exist on the subject.
You're getting into AI and a subjective opinion of readability here.
Some readers have problems with "see dick run".

I stand to be corrected if someone knows of such a tool...?

--
--
~kaeli~
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

"kaeli" <tiny_one (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) comcast.net> wrote

In article <MPG.1a7665f96ca055fd98bc90 (AT) news (DOT) odyssey.net>,
the_stan_brown (AT) fastmail (DOT) fm enlightened us with...
I tend to write fairly involved sentences, which is not
always a
good thing, and lately I've been wondering if there's some
sort of
software I could run, or a Web site where I could submit a
URL, and
have it rate the reading level of the page, preferably
pointing out
the spots that have contributed most to the difficulty, so
that I
could simplify my prose where called for; does anyone know of
such?

.....

I truly doubt it, since entire English classes exist on the
subject.
You're getting into AI and a subjective opinion of readability
here.
Some readers have problems with "see dick run".

I have been mulling over this problem.
(I tend to write sentences that are too long as well)

I could write some Java that get's an URL
parses the content, giving readouts on
average sentence length and word length,
but I do not know if that quite fits the need..

What about the 'grammar' checks that a
modern WordProcessor performs, would
that meet the requirement?

[ ..really just throwing ideas into the pot.. ]

--
Andrew Thompson
* http://www.PhySci.org/ PhySci software suite
* http://www.1point1C.org/ 1.1C - Superluminal!
* http://www.AThompson.info/andrew/ personal site

In article <UWbPb.20565$Wa.15609 (AT) news-server (DOT) bigpond.net.au>, andrew64
@bigNOSPAMpond.com enlightened us with...

What about the 'grammar' checks that a
modern WordProcessor performs, would
that meet the requirement?

[ ..really just throwing ideas into the pot.. ]

Considering how ineffectual they are, I'd say no.
/MHO

--
--
~kaeli~
Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart
http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

Stan Brown <the_stan_brown (AT) fastmail (DOT) fm> wrote:

I tend to write fairly involved sentences, which is not always a
good thing, and lately I've been wondering if there's some sort of
software I could run, or a Web site where I could submit a URL, and
have it rate the reading level of the page, preferably pointing out
the spots that have contributed most to the difficulty, so that I
could simplify my prose where called for; does anyone know of such?

There are various readability indexes, and as far as I know, they are
used for print media publications to keep them readable enough, but
much less for Web publications. The indexes developed for English are
rather simple, so I would expect to find some software for them, but at
present I can only pick up some URLs I've saved - maybe Google will
help you forward:
http://isu.indstate.edu/nelsons/asbe.../fog-index.htm
http://developer.gnome.org/documents...ide/x3568.html

My prime concern with the readability issue - which is probably the
most important issue for real accessibility (as opposite to technical
"accessibility guidelines" or "accessibility evaluations" etc.) - has
mainly been with the Finnish language. Unfortunately, the indexes
developed for it in readability studies, though simple to a human
being, are rather difficult to automate since they involve e.g.
classification of words to nouns, adjectives, etc.

Moreover, if you write about mathematics or physics, for example, in
any language, then general readability analysis may give wrong results
since it typically counts word lengths, and symbols and abbreviations
could distort the analysis. If you write about x, y, and x, the
analyzer might think it must be very readable since you have so many
short words. :-)

But for "normal" English prose, you might get useful results using just
MS Word. It can calculate Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade
Level, though this is somewhat hidden in the settings and not "on" by
default. It's in the language checks part, and MS Word can read HTML
pages rather well. I did not find a way to tell it to _only_ compute
those indexes, so it ran spelling check and grammar check (with some
useful hints!) first - but this would often be tolerable and might even
help you fix various language problems. The grammar check messages seem
to try to point out potentially too complex constructs, so it might
help to improve readability too.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

It seems "Jukka K. Korpela" wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design:

[some useful suggestions]

In case I forgot to say it: thanks! I liked the idea of making Word
check this for me, even though I wouldn't use it to create a Web
page. I have to install the grammar-checking option, which I never
installed because its suggestions are so silly.

Not bad: It gives a grade level of 8.7 on Flesch-Kincaid to this
page:
http://www.acad.sunytccc.edu/instruc...wn/viewing.htm
I wish I could get the readability statistics without the grammar
checking, but I believe I can customize the options to skip most of
the checks.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Stan Brown <the_stan_brown (AT) fastmail (DOT) fm> wrote:

I tend to write fairly involved sentences, which is not always a
good thing, and lately I've been wondering if there's some sort of
software I could run, or a Web site where I could submit a URL, and
have it rate the reading level of the page, preferably pointing out
the spots that have contributed most to the difficulty, so that I
could simplify my prose where called for; does anyone know of such?
....

http://isu.indstate.edu/nelsons/asbe.../fog-index.htm
http://developer.gnome.org/documents...ide/x3568.html

Thanks for the question and thanks for the answer.

--
C.W.Holeman II | cwhii (AT) Julian5Locals (DOT) com-5 http://JulianLocals.com/cwhii
To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilege of
earning one's bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free, for
passion. I am very thankful. The Mythical Man-Month Epilogue/F.P.Brooks