Linsear Write

Linsear Write is a readability metric for English text, purportedly developed for the United States Air Force to help them calculate the readability of their technical manuals.[1] It is one of many such readability metrics, but is specifically designed to calculate the United States grade level of a text sample based on sentence length and the number of words used that have three or more syllables.[2]

The Formula

  • Find a 100-word sample from your writing.
  • Calculate the easy words (defined as two syllables or less) and place a number "1" over each word, even including a, an, the, and other simple words.
  • Calculate the hard words (defined as three syllables or more) and place a number "3" over each word as pronounced by the dictionary.
  • Multiply the number of easy words times "1."
  • Multiply the number of hard words times "3."
  • Add the two previous numbers together.
  • Divide that total by the number of sentences.
  • If your answer is >20, divide by "2," and that is your answer.
  • If your answer is <20 or equal to 20, subtract "2," and then divide by "2." That is your answer.[3]
  • koRpus, a package for R, the Linsear Write formula is included in its functions readability() and readability.num().
  • textstat, a Python module that has a Linsear Write method to calculate the grade level for text. An example: textstat.textstat.textstat.linsear_write_formula(text)

References

  1. ↑ Arkansas Bar Association | What's New Archived 2008-01-11 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ Linsear Write Readability Formula Archived 2008-03-24 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Readability Helps The Level
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