- To use Flesh Kincaid software in Micrsoft Word 2007, first follow these directions to change your settings: Click on the Office Button at the top-left of the screen. Select “Word Options.” Click on the Proofing Tab, and scroll down to “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word.” Select the box next to “show readability statistics.”.
- The Readability tool isn’t enabled by default. To enable it, go to FileOptions. In the Proofing tab, scroll down to the ‘When correcting spelling and grammar in Word’ section and enable the ‘Show readability statistics’ option. Close the Options window and return to the document you want to check the readability of.
- In that section, check the option which says ‘Show readability statistics’ and click on OK. Once this option is enabled, you can check the readability of any.
- Ms Word Readability Tool
- Readability Test Microsoft Word Mac Free
- Microsoft Word Readability Score
- Free Readability Test
Jeff Atwood asked What’s Wrong With Apple’s Font Rendering? and as I answered in the comments it comes down to philosophy:
The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Microsoft’s documentation encourages authors of standard documents to aim for a score of 60 to 70. Word’s other readability score is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade.
Apple just scale the font naturally – sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn’t.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it’s design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically.
Jeff and Joel both wrote follow up posts agreeing that it is one of philosophy but both are of the opinion that the Windows pixel-grid approach is the better whilst our displays are only capable of low dots-per-inch (DPI).
What they don’t seem to appreciate is the compromise this causes.
Here is an example of Times New Roman on Windows (left) and Mac OS (right) scaled over whole point sizes with sub-pixel precision:
The two thing to note here arising from this “pixel-grid is king” approach are
- Windows does not scale fonts linearly as the rough line points out
- Windows scales the height and width but not the weight of the font
Neither of these may matter to a casual user but for professionals preparing material destined for high DPI (film or print) then it’s a world of difference. How can you layout a page on-screen and expect the same result on the page when the font isn’t the same width?
The issue is reminiscent of the “I hate black bars on wide-screen films” brigade who believe that the film should be chopped, panned, scaled and otherwise distorted from the artists original intention simply so that it fits better on their display.
Typography has a rich and interesting history developed and honed over centuries. It is a shame to misrepresent typefaces especially as the pixel-grid approach becomes less relevant as displays reach higher resolutions.
Update
Some additional comparisons and a note that the gamma differences between Windows and Mac will affect how you see the “other” systems rendering on your machine.
Further update (21 August 2007)
Thanks to Daring Fireball and ZDNet we’ve had a few more great comments which I’ve summarized here:
George thinks the philosophy idea is wrong because “What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?” but as Fred points out Microsoft’s desktop-user optimized rendering ends up on images and videos all over the web, thus escaping the environment for which it was crippled.
George also claims that Vista’s rendering is improved, I can’t vouch for that one way or another but from looking at his screen shots the difference there could simply be the contrast level as adjusted by the ClearType tuner.
Nathaniel believes that it’s not Microsoft’s job to manipulate a typeface and that if you want on-screen readability then choose a font designed for that such as Microsoft’s own Tahoma or Apple’s Lucida Grande.
I’d go further and say that Microsoft’s own aggression in sticking to the grid kills font choice at the regular reading size of 10/11 point by optimizing everything to a generic sans or serif look:
Ms Word Readability Tool
Windows XP
Mac OS X
James points to an article called Texts Rasterization Exposures that proposes a combination of using vertical hinting only and calculating horizontally to 256 levels and has some convincing screen-shots showing the benefits. Probably too late for Leopard or Vista SP1 though.
[)amien
If you have ever been interested in the readability level of your writing then you are going to love a hidden feature in Word 2010. Why would you care about the readability of your writing? Depending on your audience, the level at which you write needs to be adjusted accordingly, for example, if you write content for an audience in the 3rd grade you cannot expect the audience to easily understand SAT words and paragraphs with longer sentences. The same applies for a college-educated audience, which you cannot expect to remain interested in content written for a 10 year old.
In order to gauge your document’s readability you can use the highlighted below, however before you use the readability score tool you will first need to enable it using the instructions below. The tool uses the Flesch Reading Ease score and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level to test your document’s readability score.
If you have any comments or questions, please use the comments form at the end of the article.
Note: Word 2010 was used for the screenshots in this guide.
Enabling Readability Statistics in Word 2010
1. Click on the File to open the Backstage View.
2. Click on Options from the list.
3. when the Word Options window opens, click Proofing from the list.
4. Check Show readability statistics under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word.
5. Click OK to save the changes.
How to Check Readability Statistics
1. When reviewing a document click on the Review tab located in the Office Ribbon.
2. Click on the Spelling & Grammar button in the Proofing group.
When the Spelling & Grammar check is complete you will be presented with the document’s Readability Statistics window.
Readability Test Microsoft Word Mac Free
A. The Readability section will list the following information about the document:
Microsoft Word Readability Score
Passive Sentences – Percent of passive sentences in the document.
Free Readability Test
Flesch Reading Ease – This test rates text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. For most standard files, you want the score to be between 60 and 70.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level – This test rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document. For most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0.