The readability of guides to the literature Available to Purchase

Readability is usually taken to mean the ease of comprehension of written materials and is expressed numerically. In this project, readability scores for eight guides to the literature were calculated using three readability methods. These were the Dale‐Chall, Flesch Reading Ease and Smog Grading methods. Correlation coefficients between the methods were calculated and they proved significant at the 5 per cent level. The effect of jargon words on the Dale‐Chall method is discussed.