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Choosing between Web page vs. Text Only Analyses

For Spanish or Japanese content, the choice of Web page or Text only does not affect the formula used in determining readability of the content. For English content, this tool uses two different methods depending on the type of content you submit: Web page or Text only.

Web page analysis

If you submit a Web page for analysis, the tool uses the Forcast formula to analyze the content. Forcast is developed for content that is not necessarily in complete sentences, thus the formula is useful for content that has lists, navigations, links, footers, etc. Accuracy is improved if content has at least 150 words.

Advantages

Suitable for:

  • technical content
  • text with incomplete sentences
  • Web content with lists, navigations, links, footers, etc.

Disadvantages

  • content written in Javascript or within ALT tags and frames are not analyzed
  • limited number of studies have examined readability using the Forcast formula

Text only analysis

If you submit Text only, the tool uses the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Flesch Reading Ease formulas. These formulas are used specifically for text in sentence form, i.e. text with complete sentence-ending punctuation.

Advantages

  • ability to selectively analyze parts of the content
  • Flesch-Kincaid and Flesch Reading Ease formulas are widely used for determining readability of English text

Disadvantages

  • text must have sentence-ending punctuation to be analyzed; content without sentence-ending punctuation may result in inaccurate readability score
  • not suitable for Web content that has lists, navigations, links, footers, or other discontinuous text
  • text interspersed with data tables, images, lists, etc. may not be analyzed as accurately as when the text occurs in paragraphs

Limitations of Forcast and Flesch formulas with respect to Web content

Neither Forcast nor Flesch were designed for analysis of text that is not specific to Web content, but there is no known formula that specializes in analyzing readability of Web content. Users submitting Web content for analysis using either the Web page or Text only methods should select a method of analysis that best applies to their Web content.

See Differences among the Forcast, Flesch-Kincaid, and Flesch Reading Ease Formulas for more detailed information.