Linsear Write is a readability metric for English text, purportedly developed for the United States Air Force

United States Air Force

The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

to help them calculate the readability of their technical manuals. It is one of many such readability metrics, but is specifically designed to calculate the United States grade level of a text sample based on sentence length and the number words used that have three or more syllables.

The Formula

• Find a 100-word sample from your writing.
• Calculate the easy words (defined as two syllables or less) and place a number "1" over each word, even including a, an, the, and other simple words.
• Calculate the hard words (defined as three syllables or more) and place a number "3" over each word as pronounced by the dictionary.
• Multiply the number of easy words times "1."
• Multiply the number of hard words times "3."
• Add the two previous numbers together.
• Divide that total by the number of sentences.
• If your answer is >20, divide by "2," and that is your answer.
• If your answer is <20 or equal to 20, subtract "2," and then divide by "2." That is your answer.

Usage

As of March 2008, very little information about this formula and its implementations exists in popular or academic literature.

External links

• Readability Studio Windows based program that can calculate this test