Presents a review of the literature on reader-focused text evaluation. Gives an account of the document characteristics that can be evaluated and considers the possible functions of evaluations making a distinction between verifying, troubleshooting, and choice-supporting research. Presents an overview of methods appropriate for the various…

Describes a small-scale experiment in which five professional writers were asked to revise brochure fragments based on the feedback from readers. Discusses the type of feedback collected from readers and how the experiment focused on the revision phase following formative text evaluation. (SG)