Microsoft Word 2010 : Viewing a Document’s Statistics, Evaluating a Document’s Readability

11/20/2012 6:07:46 PM

Viewing a Document’s Statistics

Ever wonder how many words you’ve written so far? Word makes it easy to check statistics like word count, character count (including blank spaces), the number of lines in a document, and so on. The Word Count feature is a lifesaver if you need to make sure a document meets a specific length requirement, as is often the case when writing reports, term papers, and articles.

Finding Document Statistics

Here’s how to get a quick view of the statistics in any open document:

1.	On the Ribbon, click the Review tab.
2.	In the Proofing group, click the Word Count button. The Word Count dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Checking a document’s statistics.
3.	If your document contains text boxes, footnotes, or endnotes and you want to include them in the statistics, click the Include Textboxes, Footnotes, and Endnotes check box. Word updates the statistics in the dialog box.
4.	Click Close.

Evaluating a Document’s Readability

It might be hard to believe, but Word can “grade” a document’s readability. This isn’t the same as having other people read your document and give you their opinions of it, but it’s close enough to be helpful. Word examines your text and applies different formulas to determine how easy it is to read.

Without getting into details (because they’re confusing and boring), Word grades readability based on two scales and displays the results in the Readability Statistics dialog box, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Evaluating a document’s readability.

The Flesch Reading Ease scale tells you how easy a document is to read, based on a score of 0–100; the higher the score, the better. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level determines what level of education is required to read a document; for example, if this score is 5, your audience needs a fifth-grade education to comprehend the document.

The Readability Statistics dialog box also reveals the percentage of passive sentences (Boo! Hiss!) in the document. The higher this percentage, the worse your writing...that is, according to the lords of grammar.

You can write sentences in either active voice or passive voice. The following examples show the difference:

Active: “Aliens have invaded the city.”

Passive: “The city has been invaded by aliens.”

In this example, the two sentences pretty clearly mean the same thing. In some cases, however, passive voice can reduce the clarity of your writing. This does not mean passive sentences are wrong. To the contrary, the passive voice has its place in writing. But if Word (or an English teacher) points out a passive sentence, examine it carefully. The sentence may be clearer if you rewrite it in active voice.

Activating Readability Statistics

By default, readability statistics are turned off. The Readability Statistics dialog box appears only when you spell-check a document, and then only if you tell Word to display these statistics. Here’s how to activate readability statistics:

1.	On the Ribbon, click the File tab.
2.	Click Options. The Word Options window appears.
3.	Click Proofing to see Word’s proofing options, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. Activating readability statistics.
4.	Click the Show Readability Statistics check box.
5.	Click OK.