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Introduction
This article gives information on how to use the Readability feature to detect the reading level of website pages.
The 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. There are 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)
The resulting scores and their meaning:
Readability Score | School Grade (United States) | Additional Information |
100.00–90.00 | 5th grade | Very easy to read. Easily understood by students who are generally around 11 years old. |
90.0–80.0 | 6th grade | Easy to read. Conversational English for consumers. |
80.0–70.0 | 7th grade | Fairly easy to read. |
70.0–60.0 | 8th & 9th grade | Plain English. Easily understood by students in these grades, who are generally 13-15 years old. |
60.0–50.0 | 10th to 12th grade | Fairly difficult to read, students in these grades are generally 15-18 years old. |
50.0–30.0 | College | Difficult to read. |
30.0–10.0 | College graduate | Very difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates. |
10.0–0.0 | Professional | Extremely difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates. |
Find out more about the Flesch Kincaid Readability test.
Errors in Flesch-Kincaid
When we are not able to generate a readability score for a page, the following error messages describe the reasons:
Language not supported: This indicates that the language of the page is not recognized as English. The Flesch-Kincaid test only works for English language. A encourages you to change to the LIX test to generate scores for non-English pages.
Score could not be generated: This indicates that we could not generate an accurate score for the page. This is typically either the text on a page is too short, too long, or our web crawler does not detect any text.
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:
Click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the Domain Overview page. The Admin Settings page opens.
Note: The Settings button is only available to site admins.
Click Action on the same row as a domain. A drop-down list expands.
Select Edit Domain.
The Edit Domain pane opens.
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
This section gives information about how to access the Quality Assurance module.
Click Quality Assurance (the checkbox icon), on the Dashboard 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 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 Exclusion
It is possible to exclude a segment of the webpage from the readability scan.
For more information, see the User Guide chapters:
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:
Quality Assurance Reports
The available reports for the Quality Assurance module are:
Quality Assurance Report
Pages with Quality Assurance Errors Report
Broken Links Report
Misspellings Report
Pages with Misspellings Report
Potential Misspellings Report
Readability Score Report
Broken Links Per Page Report
Misspellings Per Page Report.
Click Schedule This Report (calendar icon) on the same row as the report to receive the report as an email attachment. Multiple selection is allowed. See Schedule a Report in this document for instructions.
Click Open Report (eye icon) to get the newest report. See View a Report in this document for instructions.
Click Report Administration (gear icon) to add other users to receive the report. See Add Users to Receive a Report in this document for instructions.
For more information, see the user guide article:
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:
There are fewer than 50 (fifty) words detected on the page.
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.
For more details about this issue, see the help center FAQ:
Additional Resources
For more information, see the User Guide chapters:
For definitions and explanations of acronyms and abbreviations used in the Monsido User Guide, see:
For further assistance, contact the Monsido support team at support@monsido.com or use the Monsido chat and help features inside the application.