Hi
I write a number of policy documents for my job. I find the best documents I write are those which are easy to read, have active sentences and have a general reading score suitable for most of the population. To help me work this out, I use the Flesch-Kincaid tool incorporated in Word. This tells me my score on Passive Sentences, Reading Ease and Grade Level.
To get your score you highlight the document and it gives you the average for the document. However, it does not give you the score for individual paragraphs, nor does it suggest changes which could be carried out to make it less complex.
A website I use to help me do this is <[login to view URL]>
As you can see, it provides six different rating scores, and when you press 'submit', it identifies the complex words.
However, to make a paragraph easier to change requires you to make the changes and then repeat the process. To do this for a whole document is time-consuming and tedious. You have to highlight a paragraph, copy, go to website, paste, press submit, rewrite, and repeat and repeat the process until you have something you like.
I require a tool which can work in Word and upon a click of a button:
Give me my score for a paragraph, page and document
Respond in real time to changes to the paragraph
Ideally, I would like the following two features:
Click a button and it shows you your original paragraph and your newly edited paragraph side by side. I thought the two page screen view would be suitable for this. This allows you to see your original paragraph and your edited one and the corresponding scores for each.
Suggestions to make your paragraph easier to read. Attached is a pdf of how changes to words can make paragraphs and sentences easier to read. it would be great to have a mechanism by which phrases can be identified and alternatives suggested.
I hope the above is clear but if not then please contact me with any questions.
Roger