Readability

This is an annotated list of more than 300 books for youths and adults that combine interesting material with relatively low vocabulary.

The listing for each book includes its title, author, publisher, and a brief summary of its contents.

These worksheets provide practice for some of the concepts described in “Plain Language: A guide to clear, effective communication.”

The authors have included activities to help pinpoint the purpose of a document and to identify its intended audience. Other activities focus on preparing an outline for a document and on writing and revising it.

This document is housed on the Hammond & Associates website: http://www.hammondassociatesinc.com.

Focusing specifically on the food services industry, this guide helps the user to prepare clear, readable workplace documents.

This document is housed on the Hammond & Associates website: http://www.hammondassociatesinc.com.

In this guide, specifically aimed at the construction industry, the author offers a guide to preparing clear, readable workplace documents.

The guide is divided into five sections, summed up in the acronym CLEAR: Clarify the message; Learn about your readers; Expand your idea; Apply the principles; and Review your work.

The authors of this workbook begin by explaining what plain language is, why it is important, and who benefits from its use. They discuss the ways that plain language can address workplace concerns like safety and communication between coworkers.

In this document, which complements “Plain Language: A guide to clear, effective communication,” the authors define plain language and explain why it is both effective and efficient.

They also use the acronym POWER to summarize their guidelines for using plain language: Pinpoint your purpose and audience; Outline your document; Write or rewrite; Enhance with design; Read, test and revise.

This document offers a guide, chronologically arranged, to theories about readability.

The author begins in 1893 with the work of L.A. Sherman on the analytics of literature and continues up to 1948 with the Dale-Chall readability formula and Rudolph Flesch’s work on reading ease.

This report, written in plain language, is about the life experiences of women with disabilities.

The project looked at women's experiences with unemployment, underemployment, employment and Adaptive Technology.

Adaptive technology is whatever equipment, hardware or software it takes for any person to use a computer.

This package contains worksheets which include reading, writing, document use and oral communications activities related to each of the books.

The books (A Woman's Courage, Mama's Song, Hopes and Dreams, Voice Like an Angel and That's the Way I Like it!) were graded by the Edward Fry "Graph for Estimating Readability". The books have readability levels ranging from grade 2.0 to 2.5.

This booklet is about writing to be understood. It will provide some ideas about what makes material difficult to read, and some tips on how to better communicate.