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 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]

Usage

As of March 2008, very little information about this formula and its implementations exists in popular or academic literature.

External links

• Readability Studio Windows based program that can calculate this test
• koRpus A package for R, the Linsear Write formula is included in its functions readability() and readability.num().

References

1. Arkansas Bar Association | What's New
2. Linsear Write Readability Formula
3. Readability Helps The Level