Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!udel!princeton!phoenix!bathurst
From: bathurst@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Bruce Bathurst)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Text readability survey
Keywords: text readability grammatik style
Message-ID: <4403@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 30 Nov 90 17:05:15 GMT
References: <9859@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Distribution: na
Organization: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Lines: 36

Mr. Gray, I`ll answer your questionnaire tonight.  Though I
feel I write adequately, I yearn for tools of the quality of
the AT&T Writer's Workbench.  Grammatik I've avoided because
it appears designed for the business community, and their
prose is not something I aspire to.

There is a program that suits the need expressed in your
earlier letter.  It's called 'style' and should be on your
UNIX system.  Style returns 4 different readability indices:
the Kincaid Formula, the Automated Readability Index, the
Coleman-Liau index, and the Flesch Reading Grade Level.
Style is part of the Writer's Workbench, which includes 33
other useful commands.  'Diction', which finds wordy
sentences, is the other Workbench command commonly found on
UNIX systems.  A good discussion of the complete Writer's
Workbench occupies all of Chapter 8 in R.S.  Tare's UNIX
Utilities, published by McGraw-Hill in 1987.

The Writer's Workbench was a huge effort by scholars, and its
completion was heralded as quite an intellectual
accomplishment.  What has happened to it?  Does no one care
to write well?  One thing is certain: the purpose of the
Workbench is linquistic analyses; it will never be a 'hot
item' with the Fortune 50 companies.  So why doesn't AT&T
donate it to universities?

If anyone knows of MS-DOS versions of any of the 34 Writer's
Workbench commands, please let us know!  Thanks!

Bruce Bathurst
Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst
Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst