X-Act
np: Biffy Clyro - Shock Shock
Long story short: in the postgraduate course in education I'm reading, I learned about a few readability indices. These are used to provide an estimate of the readability of a piece of text. The output of these indices is invariably the minimum grade level, based on the U.S. education system, that a person needs to have in order to understand the text. For example, if the readability index of an article is 10, then Grade 10 students or older (14-15 year olds) would be able to understand the text.
I think that these readability indices can be used in our articles or analyses. We need to keep in mind that the average people that are reading our analyses or articles are probably Grade 10 students. That means that we shouldn't write text that is more complex than this.
This website provides readability indices for any text that is pasted in it, together with their average. I think it would be a good idea to paste the article or analysis we're typing or editing in this website to check whether we get a Grade 10-level text or lower. If it's higher than Grade 10, here are some suggestions to simplify the text:
Here are some average scores for some of our articles:
Attacking Types (from The Smog #3): 8.68
Normalized Base Stats: 8.72
Introduction To Competitive Pokemon: 10.12
Mastering the OU Ladder (from The Smog #5): 10.54
The Art of Hail Stall: 10.58
Bronzong Analysis: 11.36
Jolteon Analysis: 11.60
I don't know if the analyses I chose are exceptions, but it seems like analyses seem to be beyond the comprehension of Grade 10 students. Maybe they require a little bit of simplification?
As an aside, my articles' non-mathematical parts can be oddly understood by Grade 9 students, which is somewhat of a shock to me.
(This post's readability index is 8.22, so it should be clear to every Smogon member!)
I think that these readability indices can be used in our articles or analyses. We need to keep in mind that the average people that are reading our analyses or articles are probably Grade 10 students. That means that we shouldn't write text that is more complex than this.
This website provides readability indices for any text that is pasted in it, together with their average. I think it would be a good idea to paste the article or analysis we're typing or editing in this website to check whether we get a Grade 10-level text or lower. If it's higher than Grade 10, here are some suggestions to simplify the text:
- Split long sentences into shorter ones.
- Try to replace words having 3 or more syllables with other words having 2 or less syllables without altering the meaning of the sentence.
Here are some average scores for some of our articles:
Attacking Types (from The Smog #3): 8.68
Normalized Base Stats: 8.72
Introduction To Competitive Pokemon: 10.12
Mastering the OU Ladder (from The Smog #5): 10.54
The Art of Hail Stall: 10.58
Bronzong Analysis: 11.36
Jolteon Analysis: 11.60
I don't know if the analyses I chose are exceptions, but it seems like analyses seem to be beyond the comprehension of Grade 10 students. Maybe they require a little bit of simplification?
As an aside, my articles' non-mathematical parts can be oddly understood by Grade 9 students, which is somewhat of a shock to me.
(This post's readability index is 8.22, so it should be clear to every Smogon member!)