Literacy Policy and the Emerging Technology of Readability

Abstract

The procedures for predicting and adjusting the comprehensibility of printed prose have steadily progressed from the status of an art, through that of a quasi-science, and are now emerging as a scientific technology having considerable generality and precision. Of special interest is the fact that this body of knowledge has much potential for enhancing the effectiveness of a nation’s efforts to achieve a desirable level of literacy in its population while, at the same time, reducing the costs of those efforts. This paper outlines some of the arguments that favor accelerating the development of this technology in the developed nation and the founding of the technology in the mother tongues of developing nations.