The Readability Principle.
Edward Fry · Language Arts · 1975
Since tiie world is gradually beginning to take readability more seriously, it is time that the concept is reduced to a brief and easily remembered principle, rule, or law. I doubt if anything connected with reading could ever reach the exalted heights of the Peter Principle or Ohm's Law, but certainly the concept of readability needs something more satisfactory than matching the student's reading ability to the readability level of the text. It is true that matching the level of the student with the level of the material is the basic idea behind readability, but we all have seen students with relatively low reading ability occasionally read something on a much greater difficulty level than a simple match would predict as possible. An obvious example would be an adolescent boy with middle elementary reading ability who will spend hours on an automobile repair or modification manual that is written on the high school level. This boy either has, or dreams of having, an automobile, and the motivation to read the manual is