Text Readability Resources

Which measure you choose depends on your target audience and purpose.

This page gives very brief descriptions of different common measures of text readability and their usual application domains:

• Readability Calculations - Formulas

Sites that provide interactive tools:

• Simple SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) tool
• More complex SMOG tool
• Flesch readability (reading ease, 1-100, higher number is easier)
• Gunning Fog Index tool

Formulas you can use, but not interactively (get out your calculator):

• Formulas for Gunning Fog Index, Flesch, and Powers Sumner Kearl
• Fry's readability graph