Evaluated the effect of using underlining cues in prose materials for 24 elderly volunteers with low or high Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale vocabulary subtest scores. Results showed underlining cues were not successful in reducing vocabulary-related differences in performance. (BH)

An investigation was made to determine the levels of readability of representative works of prose fiction by contemporary American authors. Authors were selected on the basis of their appearing in the "Modern Language Association International Bibliography of Books and Articles" for the years 1958-1967. Authors appearing there were…

This paper presents guidelines for improving instructional text under three main headings: prose and grammatical features; tables and graphs; and typographical design. The paper has been printed in such a way as to illustrate the points made. (Author)

This paper suggests that teachers concentrate on the ideational and structural properties of text rather than on information acquired from readability formulas when selecting and using texts. Emphasis is given to the importance of context in the analysis of text, and a framework is suggested for examining the text considering the functions texts…

A simple, new method for determing the readability level of prose passages in reading material for children is described and discussed. The method, which assigns a value to each noun in selected passages on the basis of its frequency level on standard word-frequency charts, correlated highly in a number of studies with independent estimates of the…

This study addressed whether students could change their reading rate when presented with two clearly explicated purposes for reading. Results indicated that students could adapt their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. (Author/GK)

Results of a study involving approximately 500 sixth and seventh graders suggest that a two-column layout with traditional paragraphing denotation is more readable than a single-column layout, but that an extreme line length does not place an undue strain on the reader. (Examples of the two formats are included.) (GT)

This booklet describes and discusses a method for determining the readability level of prose passages in reading materials for children. The method discussed in the booklet assigns a value to each noun in selected passages on the basis of its frequency level on standard word-frequency charts, correlated in a number of studies with independent…

Drawing from the conclusions of research studies by linguists and psychologists, this paper describes four classes of principles for constructing readable prose for both print materials and computer screens: (1) global principles dealing with a schema-theory approach to discourse type, with topical focus, and with parallelism; (2) sentence-level…

Undergraduates read a prose passage and were tested on its contents. Difficulty, permission to underline key phrases, and financial motivation were varied. Non-highly motivated subjects performed better on the easy version; underlining aided highly motivated subjects and those reading the difficult version. (Author/RD)

Three passages of fifth-grade readability were read and recalled by 24 high- and low-ability fifth graders and college students. These passages were characterized as either narrative (high degree of temporal linkage), expository (logical linkage and abstract content), or mixed (logical linkage but with content suggestive of a narrative). The…

Quantitative and qualitative aspects of the reading of narrative and expository materials were studied in a sample of 47 eighth-grade students. Informal Reading Inventories were developed from narrative and expository materials in use in the students' school, as were longer narrative and expository passages for miscue analysis. Passages were…

Assesses the utility of the analyses within the "Writer's Workbench" (an advanced text editor) range. Compares professional prose with first-year college student essays, using readability, sentence variety, sentence structure, parts of speech, vocabulary, and usage. (MS)

This report compares a typical newspaper account of an event with other possible ways of narrating the event. It argues that journlists' beliefs about the appropriate format, style, and content for a news story work in concert to obscure the structure of the story and the relations among subparts, and thus serve to thwart their presumed goal in…