new-dale-chall-readability 1.0.12

Implements the New Dale-Chall readability formula. Its output is tested against samples from the original publication.

The new Dale-Chall readability formula

I wrote this by ordering a copy of Readability Revisited: The new Dale-Chall readability formula. I used the book to code the library from scratch.

Installation:

$ pip install new-dale-chall-readability

Let's try it out:

$ ipython

In [1]: from new_dale_chall_readability import cloze_score, reading_level

In [2]: text = (
   ...:     'Latin for "friend of the court." It is advice formally offered '
   ...:     'to the court in a brief filed by an entity interested in, but not '
   ...:     'a party to, the case.'
   ...:     )

In [3]: reading_level(text)
Out[3]: '7-8'

In [4]: cloze_score(text)
Out[4]: 36.91

What's a "cloze score" and "reading level"?

Cloze is a deletion test invented by Taylor (1953). The 36.91 score, above, means that roughly that 37% of the words could be deleted and the passage could still be understood. So, a higher cloze score is more readable. They "range from 58 and above for the easiest passages to 10-15 and below for the most difficult" (Chall & Dale, p. 75).

Reading level is the grade level of the material, in years of education. The scale is from 1 to 16+.

See the integration test file for text samples from the book, along with their scores.

Why yet another Dale-Chall readability library?

It's 2022 and there are probably a half-dozen implementations on PyPI. So why create another one?

• The existing libraries have issues that made me wonder if the results were accurate. For example:
  • From my reading, I saw that reading levels are a set of ten "increasingly broad bands" (p. 75). And they have labels like 3 and 7-8. The existing readability libraries treat these as floating point numbers. But now I believe that an enumeration — or specifically, a Literal — captures the formula better: Literal["1", "2", "3", "4", "5-6", "7-8", "9-10", "11-12", "13-15", "16+"]
  • I also couldn't find a good description of this "new" Dale-Chall formula, and how the existing libraries implement it.
  • The readability scores are important for my international dictionary app: It shows definitions sorted with the most readable first, to increase comprehension. The entry for amicus curiae is a good example. But I was getting odd results on some pages.
• Use Test-Driven Development to squash bugs and prevent regressions.
• Turn examples from the book into test cases.
• Write with modern Python. I'm no expert, so I'm learning as I go along. E.g.,
  • It passes Pyright strict-mode type-checking.
  • It uses recent type enhancements like Literal.
• Present a very easy API to use in any app or library.
  • No need to instantiate an object and learn its API.
  • Just import the needed function and call it.

The result is a library that provides, I think, more accurate readability scores.

References

Chall, J., & Dale, E. (1995). Readability revisited: The new Dale-Chall readability formula. Brookline Books.

Taylor, W. (1953). Cloze procedure: a new tool for measuring readability. Journalism Quarterly, 33, 42-46.