Preparation of the text
TextQuest/Refo can use texts copied from the clipboard or read from a file. They should not contain non-printable characters or HTML codes. It may be necessary that the text has to be edited to get valid results of a readability analysis.
Readability formulas rely mostly on counting sentences and/or syllables. TextQuest/ReFo splits a text into grammatical sentences, but sometimes editing is required - details see below.
Some hints
- Encoding: All texts must use UTF-8 encoding, otherwise TextQuest will stop. An editor like TextPad is able to store the text in this format. MS-Words or PDF files are currently not supported, you can cut and paste your text from your application to the input window of TextQuest/ReFo.
- Count of sentences: Because nearly all formulas include the count of sentences, sentence counters are important. Although a sentence can end with a period, this doesn't mean that each period is the end of a sentence. A period can be within a decimal number, or it can end with an abbrevation. TextQuest uses a list of common abbrevations for each language. However, if one abbrevation is not recognized, the text must be changed - delete the period. Headings might also cause problems, often it makes sense to define each heading as a sentence, a period at the end of the heading must be added then. The same technique can be used to define each entry of a list as a sentence.
- Count of syllables: Often the formulas consist of a counter for syllables. TextQuest uses different algorithms to count syllables, depending on the language. English is an exception, because there are so many exceptions that the database of the Carnegie Mellon University is used for counting.