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Introduction
This chapter gives information on how to use the Readability Quality Assurance feature in Monsido to detect and adjust the reading level of website pages.
The Monsido readability feature categorizes the difficulty of the vocabulary on a website into comprehension and school grade values. This helps website owners improve the experience for their users. Monsido provides two methods to choose between:
Flesch Kincaid Readability test (English text)
The Flesch–Kincaid readability test is used for English text and it measures word length, number of syllables per word, and sentence length. The formula for the Flesch (FRES) test is:
206.835 - 1.015 (total words/total sentences) - 84.6 (total syllables/total words)
Find out more about the Flesch Kincaid Readability test.
LIX Readability test (non-English text)
The LIX method is used for foreign languages and the readability formula is as follows:
LIX = A/B + (C x 100)/A, where:
A = Number of words
B = Number of periods (defined by period, colon, or upper-case first letter)
C = Number of long words (More than 6 letters)
Find out more about the LIX readability test.
Clear language rules also affect the overall readability scores. Generally, these rules apply:
Long Sentences: Sentences that exceed 20 words are flagged. Aim for 5% or lower total content with long sentences. The message is likely buried in complex statements and run-on sentences. A tip is to split the long sentences or use lists.
Average Sentence Length: Aim for 10 words per sentence or fewer for optimal readability.
Passive Language: Aim for 5% or lower total content in passive language. Active language is more direct and clear. Examples:
Active voice:
Monkeys adore bananas.
The cashier counted the money.
The dog chased the squirrel.
Passive voice:
Bananas are adored by monkeys.
The money was counted by the cashier.
The squirrel was chased by the dog.
Readability: The ideal readability score is 60 or higher. This ensures a clear message and easy-to-follow instructional text.
Configuration
Set up the Quality Assurance Readability features:
From the Monsido Domain Overview (Globe icon) click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the page. The Admin Settings page opens.
Note: The Settings button is only available to site admins.
On the Admin settings page, click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain.
The Edit Domain pane slides out.
In the Features section:
Readability: Click to select the type of readability test to scan for:
Flesch Kincaid Readability test (English text)
LIX Readability test (non-English text).
Minimum words: Enter the minimum number of words that a page should contain in order for the readability test to assess the difficulty.
Instructions
Click Select Domain to open the Domain Overview page.
Click Open on the same row as the domain name.
The Dashboard for the domain opens.
Click Quality Assurance (the checkbox icon), on the toolbar.
The Quality Assurance page opens.
Readability
Click Readability from the menu on the left.
The Readability page opens.
A bar chart gives a visual image of the number of pages in each readability difficulty level.
A circular diagram shows the readability category that the highest percentage of pages has.
The Readability by Score section shows the number of pages that have a readability level in each category.
On the same row as a readability score, click on the number in the Pages column.
The Pages with Score pane opens.
The toolbar at the top of the page gives the options to:
Export: Click to export the list.
A dialog box opens. Select your export file:
Start Export
A message informs that, "Your export is currently being generated, You will receive an email when the export is ready." To view the progress, click the avatar icon on the main toolbar and select My Exports, or use the provided button Go to My Exports.
Search: Click in the dialog box and type a search parameter.
The page header gives some quick help instructions and shows the percentage of pages with the selected score.
The table with the results has the headers:
Title and URL: The page title and link to the page.
Readability Score: The readability score per school grade.
Total words: Total number of words that meet the criteria to determine the specific readability score.
Priority: Low, Medium, High as determined by the number of page views.
Views: Approximate number of page views since the last scan.
Open page details: On the same row as a page, click the Page icon to navigate to the overview of the page. This view shows the readability score as determined by the last scan.
Redirect to page: Click to navigate to the page URL and view the page as an external visitor.
Add Source Code Exclude
It is possible to exclude a segment of the webpage from the readability scan.
For more information, see the User Guide chapter:
History
The History Center stores all Readability issues and details from previous scans.
From any page within Monsido, click History Center (bar graph icon), located on the top menu bar.
The History Center landing page opens.
The page contains the following layout:
Domain: In the first field, click to expand the list of domains.
Click to select a domain from the list or switch to another domain.
Module: In the second field, click to expand the list of available modules.
Click to select Readability from the drop-down list. The Readability page of the History Center opens.
The topmost section gives information on the profile that is being used for the results shown.
Viewing as Profile: This shows the profile that is being used.
For more information, see the User Guide chapter:
Device: The type of device used.
Measure from: Distance from the server location.
Network speed: The speed of the network.
Check frequency: The frequency of the check.
Important: The Dashboard always shows data with the default profile selected. To change this, select a new profile (click the drop-down arrow to see the available profiles). Please be aware that when you change the profile, the numbers on all three sections inside the Performance module update accordingly.
Graph with performance speed and date as well as a donut chart showing the average performance score.
Scan history results: This table shows valuable scan data from previous scans.
Scan history results: This table shows valuable scan data from previous scans.
Crawled at: Date and time of scan.
Pages crawled: Number of pages scanned.
Readability levels: Total number of issues per readability level criteria, broken down into category icons that represent the reading grade level.
For more information, see the User Guide chapter:
FAQ
This section contains the answers to frequently asked questions about this article topic.
Why is there no Readability score on some of my pages?
Answer: This can happen for a number of reasons:
Monsido cannot detect any content on the page. This can happen if the page structure is not identifiable, or if the page only has, for example, images, tables or charts, or bullet lists with links and incomplete sentences. In these cases, it is not necessary to have a readability score because the content is not strictly in a readable format.
If the HTML code has an incorrect markup, the text might not be identifiable. This must be repaired within the code for the pages that are affected.
Article Glossary
This section contains definitions and explanations of acronyms and technical terms used in this article, presented in alphabetical order.
HTML: The abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is
the standard markup language for creating Web pages and it describes the structure of a web page.
Additional information:
For more information, see the User Guide chapters:
For further assistance, contact the Monsido support team at support@monsido.com or via the Monsido chat and help features inside the application.
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