A Guide to Self-help Resources for Depression and Anxiety: A Practitioners' Resource: Doing Well by People with Depression

An interactive guide on self-help resources for depression and other common mental health issues for use by practitioners


Appendix B

Readability

The main function of readability tests is to give you a quick assessment about the density of your writing. Readability tests cannot tell you how easily a reader can understand the information in the text.

Flesch Reading Ease Score

The Flesch Reading Score is one measure of the readability of written material. The score bases its rating on the average number of syllables per word and words per sentence.

It rates text on a 100-point scale; the higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. For most standard documents, the aim is for a score of approximately 60 to 70.

100

Very easy to read

Average sentence length is 12 words or less. No words of more than two syllables.

65

Plain English

Average sentence length is 15 to 20 words. Average word has two syllables.

0

Extremely difficult to read

Average sentence length is 37 words. Average word has more than two syllables.

Click here for link to the Plain English Campaign

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