CONCLUSION

Today, the readability formulas are more popular than ever. There are readability formulas for Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean (Rabin 1988).

The formulas have survived 80 years of intensive application, investigation, and controversy, with both their credentials and limitations remaining intact. The national surveys on adult literacy have re-defined our audience for us. Any approach to effective communication that ignores these important lessons cannot claim to be scientific. If we walk away from this research, others will one day rediscover it and apply it to our work as technical communicators.

The variables used in the readability formulas show us the skeleton of a text. It is up to us to flesh out that skeleton with tone, content, organization, coherence, and design. Gretchen Hargis of IBM (2000) states that readability research has made us very aware of what we "write at the level of words and sentences." She writes:

Technical writers have accepted the limited benefit that these measurements offer in giving a rough sense of the difficulty of material.

We have also assimilated readability as an aspect of the quality of information through its pervasiveness in areas such as task orientation, completeness, clarity, style, and visual effectiveness. We have put into practice, through user-centered design, ways to stay focused on the needs of our audience and their problems in using the information or assistance that we provide with computer products.

The research on literacy has made us aware of the limited reading abilities of many in our audience. The research on readability has made us aware of the many factors affecting their success in reading. The readability formulas, when used properly, help us increase the chances of that success.