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David Dubin wondered: <<We develop technical training for human
resource management system software and payroll software and have a
very diverse audience. One of the "standards" that we are in the
process of discussing across our business units is that of
readability levels. So, to be brief, would you please share with me
the readability levels you target for specific audiences and/or cite
other sources that may have that information?>>
Readability levels are a waste of time, and provide no useful data.
(Steven Jong should be rebutting this statement in about 30 seconds.
Hi, Steve! Long time no argue! <g>) There was an interesting article
published a while back that demonstrated this quite conclusively:
"Last rites for readability formulas in technical communication." BR
CONNATSER Journal of technical writing and communication 29:33,
271-287, Baywood, 1999
Other studies (all poorly designed and controlled, at least in the
ones for which I've read the journal articles) contradict this paper.
That might lead you to have more confidence in the formulas, but
think of it this way: if half the studies claim the formulas are
useful and half claim they're useless, this is clear evidence that
the formulas fail at least as often as they succeed. That makes them
a dangerous tool in my opinion. Sure they provide data, but as any
scientist (including me, in a former life) will tell you, numbers
don't always mean anything.
Want to prove this to your own satisfaction? Take any sentence, and
randomize the word order; better still, rearrange the words so that
the sentences are mutually contradictory. For extra points, randomize
the punctuation. If your readability formula doesn't distinguish
between the two sentences, you've just proved that your formula will
not detect incomprehensible text. It certainly won't identify
illogical, inconsistent, incomplete, dangerous, or factually
incorrect text.
So don't waste your time with these meaningless formulas. Instead,
hire a good editor, tell them to make sure the text is comprehensible
to a general audience, and rest assured that you'll get the results
you want.
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