Readability test

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Readability tests or readability formulas are formulaic protocols for evaluating the readability of text, which may be used instead of conducting an actual statistical survey of human readers, or perhaps may be used in conducting such a survey, known as a readability survey.

The application of a useful readability test protocol will give a rough indication of a work's readability, with accuracy increasing when applied to find an average indication of readability of a large number of works.

They generate a score based on characteristics such as statistical average word length (which is a used as a proxy for semantic difficulty) and sentence length (as a proxy for syntactic complexity) of the work.

Some readability formulas refer to a list of words graded for difficulty. These formulas attempt to overcome the fact that some words, like "television", are well known to younger children, but have many syllables. In practice, however, the utility of simple word and sentence length measures make them more popular for readability formulas.^{[citation needed]} Scores are compared with scales based on judged linguistic difficulty or reading grade level. Many readability formulas measure word length in syllables rather than letters, but only SMOG has a computerized readability program incorporating an accurate syllable counter.

Since readability tests do not factor in meaning, they should not be considered definitive measures of readability. Certain word processing programs have some of these formulas built in.