You’ve enabled your Readability Statistics feature in Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar Checker and evaluated a sample document. But based on your Readability scores, what action should you take?
The Spelling and Grammar Checker’s Readability Statistics feature provides Passive Sentences, Reading Ease, and Grade Level scores, which help you gauge the readability level of your documents. Readability scores are especially helpful editing tools for writers of too-long or run-on sentences. Recall from the Clarity Clinic that our goal is to write sentences that can be read once and immediately understood. Readable documents are more apt to be read in their entirety, and their content is more apt to be remembered. Readability indictors include:
- The number of sentences in each paragraph.
- The number of words in each sentence.
- The number of syllables in each word.
The Reading Ease score is on a scale of 0-100%. The higher the score, the easier a document is to read. Let’s explore how to use the Reading Ease score:
Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, (with its 7-word sentences and one syllable words) scores 118.1% on the Reading Ease test. But business writers usually require longer than 7-word sentences and multi-syllabic words for precise communication. Therefore, a good Reading Ease score for most business writing is 60-70%. If your score is lower than that range, locate opportunities to adjust paragraph, sentence, and word length and test your word choice for familiar words. For example, the Reading Ease score for the previous Passive Sentences Blog is 58.6—a little lower than the comfortable 60-70% range. Reviewing my writing to identify any opportunities to improve my score, I notice the following long sentence —
LONG SENTENCE: While most business documents require active voice for a clearer, more direct style, business writers may use passive voice to improve flow or to emphasize certain content (such as a completed action). [With 32 words, this sentence has a Reading Ease score of 35.4.]
REVISION: Most business documents require active voice for a clearer, more direct style. But writers may use passive voice to improve flow or to emphasize certain content (such as a completed action). [With 12 and 19 words respectively, these two shorter sentences have a Reading Ease score of 53.1.]
Making that one revision raised the Reading Ease score of the earlier Blog from 58.6 to 59.2, encouraging me to locate and revise additional long sentences.
Long sentences may decrease readability, but their punctuation is correct. A run-on sentence connects two or more sentences without correct punctuation, so the reader isn’t sure where one sentence ends and the next begins.
RUN-ON SENTENCE: Most business documents require active voice for a clearer more direct style business writers may use passive voice to improve flow or to emphasize certain content (such as a completed action). [Hard to read and understand, this run-on sentence has a Reading Ease score of 32.3. The Spelling & Grammar Checker didn’t catch the missing punctuation.]
If you often omit punctuation, creating run-on sentences, a lower-than-desired Reading Ease score alerts you to check for missing periods (or ‘full stops’) at the ends of sentences (The Journal of Literacy and Technology, November 2010). As shown in our run-on sentence example above, for locating run-on sentences, the Reading Ease score is more reliable than the Spelling & Grammar Checker.
In the next Blog, we’ll look at the Grade Level score. In the meantime, set up your Readability Statistics feature. Then use the Reading Ease score to assess sentence length to help you locate and correct any too long or run-on sentences in your documents.
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