Readability

Readability is next to the legibility, the content structure and the structure of texts is one of several criteria for the comprehensibility of texts ( text comprehensibility ). It is based on the linguistic structure ( inter alia: word and sentence complexity, vocabulary ), making it one of the criteria for how simply read a text, understand and comprehend leaves. Often " readability " is also more or less with " intelligibility " equated.

The reading process is, however, influenced not only on the readability and intelligibility even of criteria that do not lie on the part of the text itself, but on the part of the reader, the language skills, thematic (technical) knowledge and interests of the reader and its concentration. Therefore, be very easy to follow one and the same text for someone completely incomprehensible and for another person. Also unsuitable font size can act aggravating, eg for small computers or e-books.

Readability and comprehensibility criteria

Recognizability - Typography

The detectability of a text is determined by its medium ( paper or screen) and the presentation. The readability of a text is influenced for example by the font, font size and color, letter and word spacing, line length and line spacing or hyphenation used. They can be measured, inter alia, the speed at which a text can be read. The detectability and distinguishability of each character plays a crucial role.

Unfortunately, there is little research on the subject, there have been but in the long history of typography emerged some shaped by experience or tradition rules that today enjoy great recognition.

In running text Serifenschriftarten are considered more readable. An exception to here represent early readers, which are said to be irritated by serifs. In addition, there is a correlation between font size and font family: Very large types, how they are used in headlines, billboards, etc., are usually sans serif, in running text normal size one chooses mostly serif fonts. Very small fonts in turn can decipher the usual typographic teaching by better if the serifs omitted.

Special cases are headings for electronic displays and screens with their relatively coarse pixel grids: Here are the types need to be optimized in favor of readability for the intended medium, which is hardly possible with very small serif fonts. For this reason, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) recommends the use of sans-serif fonts for accessible websites.

If not already present in the typographic design of publications of the actual text, the readability of the general layout can also be assessed with the help of dummy text.

Readability - sentence structure and language style

On the readability and thus also on the course a whole have, among other things, the average word length (number of syllables per word), sentence length (number of words per sentence ), the sentence position and the proportion of rare words and foreign words strong influence.

For English lyrics, and later for other languages, different formulas for determining the readability have been proposed in which, for example, syllables and sentence lengths are counted. The calculated value expresses eg the age or grade level of at which a child should understand the text, or is simply a measure that will make different texts more or less comparable.

Furthermore, the type of play representation, logical reasoning, expression - but also the knowledge of the reader - a role.

Traceability - Complexity

The comprehensibility of a text refers to how quickly his statement to the reader opens up in their meaning.

Readability and error

Errors reduce readability. This applies to different types of errors, such as spelling and grammatical errors or technical errors. However, due to the redundancy of the text they can often be compensated when reading. This can go so far that a text says the opposite of what he means (for example, due to incorrect application of the negation ), but still understood is. Frequent errors and the acceptance and awareness of a text can be reduced in addition to the reading speed. Ambiguous texts can easily lead to misinterpretation. Ambiguity can also be caused by lack of or improper use of punctuation, for example.

Spelling reform of 1996 and readability

The aim of the reform of German orthography from 1996 was to facilitate the writing or to reduce the error rate, but not to facilitate the reading and understanding of texts. According to the unanimous opinion (see below) leads, in particular the liberalized commas to more difficult readability of sentences or demonstrably misleading or even understand until later in the context of texts. The same is true for the upper and lower case letters as well as the separate and coupled together and the legalization of so-called folk etymology: By now same letters different terms, in some cases, differences in meaning become apparent visible or only further reading from the text context ( see below).

At other contents of the reform, for example, the Heyseschen instead of Adelungschen Eszett letters or Germanize of foreign words, there are different opinions and not objective statements.

A method for increasing the intelligibility

In journalism, the reader scan method is used to increase the readability of printed texts since 2005. The method allows to detect lines exactly where a representative sample of readers from the angelesenen articles in newspapers and magazines has dropped out. The method thus provides an empirical basis to assess the readability of published texts. By comparing the exit points with the criteria of understandability, the exit behavior of the readership can be explained. In software engineering, the readability is increased by means of rules of formulating and formatting of code and their documentation in order to ensure their serviceability.

Practical instructions for journalists who rely on the findings of legibility research part, have long been Wolf Schneider is.

508575
de