Java Reference
In-Depth Information
rounded to the nearest integer.
The purpose of the index is to force authors to rewrite their text until the
index is high enough. This is achieved by reducing the length of
sentences and by removing long words. For example, the sentence
The following index was invented by Flesch as a simple tool
to estimate the legibility of a document without linguistic
analysis.
can be rewritten as
Flesch invented an index to check whether a text is easy to
read. To compute the index, you need not look at the
meaning of the words.
284
285
Flesch's book [
7
] contains delightful examples of translating government
regulations into Ȓplain Englishȓ.
This index is a number, usually between 0 and 100, indicating how
difficult the text is to read. Some example indices for random material
from various publications are:
Comics
95
Consumer ads
82
Sports Illustrated
65
Time
57
New York Times
39
Auto insurance policy
10
Internal Revenue Code
ɰ 6
Translated into educational levels, the indices are:
