. Both measures provide insights into a writer's writing style and characteristics. They help analyze the richness, complexity, and vocabulary variety.
High lexical density suggests more detailed and descriptive language, contributing to a potentially complex writing style. Low lexical density may indicate simpler language use. High lexical diversity indicates a varied vocabulary and potentially more sophisticated writing style. Low lexical diversity might imply a more repetitive or basic writing style. (
. )
Aspect | Description |
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Concepts | Lexical Density and Lexical Diversity |
Purpose | Measures the complexity and variety of vocabulary in a text, often used to assess how informative or engaging a piece of writing is. |
Definitions | - Lexical Density: The proportion of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) to the total number of words in a text. Indicates how much information is packed into the text.
- Lexical Diversity: The range of different words used in the text. Calculated by the ratio of unique words (types) to the total number of words (tokens). Indicates variety in vocabulary.
|
Formulas | - Lexical Density=(Number of Content Words / Total Words) × 100
- Lexical Diversity (Type-Token Ratio)=(Number of Unique Words / Total Words) × 100
|
Interpretation | - Lexical Density: Higher density suggests a more information-rich, complex text. Lower density suggests simpler language.
- Lexical Diversity: Higher diversity indicates a wide vocabulary and variety in expression, while lower diversity may suggest repetition.
|
Uses | - Evaluates the richness and complexity of vocabulary in educational materials, literature, and informational texts.
- Helps writers, educators, and editors assess the language level and engagement of a text.
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Benefits | - Lexical Density helps gauge how informative a text is, useful for analyzing academic and technical writing.
- Lexical Diversity highlights vocabulary variety, supporting assessments of creativity and language proficiency.
- Combined, these metrics can guide adjustments to make content suitable for different reading levels or stylistic preferences.
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Example | For a 100-word text with 60 content words and 80 unique words: - Lexical Density=(60 / 100) × 100=60%
- Lexical Diversity=(80 / 100) × 100=80%
This indicates a moderately information-rich text with a diverse vocabulary. |
Our
Readability Scoring System will analyze English-language text and score the "reading ease" or "reading difficulty" of your text based on popular readability formulas. You'll find out the type of readers who are most likely to understand your text, including their grade level and age.
1. GET STARTED Paste your text into the text area or upload a .txt, .pdf, MS-Word, or html file from your computer. For other documents, copy the text to your device's clipboard, then paste into the text area.
2. FOR BEST RESULTS Make sure your text is spell-checked beforehand. Misspellings can alter results. Each sentence should end with a punctuation mark, otherwise run-on sentences can alter results. Abbreviated words should be correctly abbreviated (Mr. or Mrs. not Mr or Mrs). A clean, properly-formatted and grammatically-correct text will yield the best results.
3. SELECT A FORMULA If you don't know which readability formula is best suited for your text, then use our
Average Reading Level Consensus Calc. It will automatically select (9) popular formulas suited for all types of text. For a word-based formula, most writers prefer the Dale-Chall Formula because it can score any type of text. For a graph-based formula, the Fry Graph is widely-used. Otherwise, experiment with different formulas.
4. FINE-TUNE OUR SYSTEM Open the "System Settings" (below the formulas) and change default settings to fine-tune how the scoring system processes your text. Click on any [ ? ] to get more information about the option.
5. READY, SET, GO! When you're ready, hit the "Calculate Text Readability" button. Our system will analyze and score your text and output the information on a new page.
6. WORD STATS ONLY If you need a fast way to see "Word Statistics" for your text, import your text and click on the "Text Statistics" tab. The app will process your text and output important stats, such as syllable count, average sentence length, number of abbreviations, proper nouns, passive voice, etc.
To learn more about readability formulas and how they influence the way we write and edit, visit our website's
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