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Readability

How to Check Readability for Free

Now more than ever, being able to communicate effectively is an in-demand skill. Whether you’re writing an email, a blog post or creating website content, having a message that not only resonates with people but is fully and easily understood by them is vital.

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Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

Now more than ever, being able to communicate effectively is an in-demand skill. Whether you’re writing an email, a blog post or creating website content, having a message that not only resonates with people but is fully and easily understood by them is vital. Fortunately, there are a variety of free tools to help you check the readability of your content and improve your writing. 

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at some of the best ways to check readability for free. However, before we jump right in, it’s important to understand why readability is so important and what exactly it means to score well on a readability test. 

What Is Readability? 

Readability is simply the ease with which someone can comprehend written text. But what exactly does that mean? Writing clearly and concisely helps not only improve the understanding of your content but also helps your readers to retain it more easily, in turn helping you meet communication goals. 

Now that you have a better understanding of what readability is and what it involves, how do you measure it, and even better, how can you do it for free? 

Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests

One of the most common and most popular types of readability formulas is the Flesch-Kincaid scale. This test looks at the average length of sentences and number of syllables per word to give a given passage a specific “grade level”. This score means that students at or above that grade level should be able to read and understand your text. 

Many free readability tests use Flesch-Kincaid as their standard for evaluating readability. Beyond this, some readability checkers also offer tips for improving your writing such as broadening your word choice and maintaining the right tone and flow. 

Grammar and Spelling Checkers

Although grammar and spelling checkers aren’t readability checkers themselves, improving your spelling and grammar has a definite impact on the readability of your piece. Tools like Grammarly go beyond ordinary grammar and spell checks to help you improve the accuracy and punctuation of your writing which then indirectly affects the readability of your document.

So far, we’ve covered the how and why of readability tests and touched on a few different ways to improve readability, now let’s dive into the good stuff – how to check readability for free. 

How to Check Readability for Free

There are several ways to check readability for free both online and offline. Here are a few of the most common options used by content creators, website owners and publishers. 

Use a Readability Add-Ons for Google Docs and Microsoft Word

There are several different readability add-ons for Google Docs and Microsoft Word. 

Check Readability in Microsoft Word

By default, Microsoft Word has a built-in readability checker. 

In the browser toolbar choose Word > Preferences > Spelling and Grammar. Check “Check grammar with spelling and Show readability statistics.

In the Word document itself, choose Review > Spelling & Grammar

Check Readability in Google Docs

Google Docs does not have a built-in readability checker. This feature used to exist in the Google Docs app but was removed by the development team some years ago. 

There are some browser add-ons that work with Google Docs to check readability, but most of them have a one-time cost or a monthly fee. Conversely, Microsoft Word’s readability checker is free.

In order to check for readability in Google Docs, you’ll need to either download a browser extension (more on that below) or use a web-based readability checker.

Use a Readability Browser Extension

As we noted above, there are several readability browser extensions for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and many more, however it’s important to keep in mind that should you choose one of these tools, you may be putting your privacy at risk. Because browser extensions typically require access to your browsing data in order to “read” and analyze it, you may not understandably want to grant permission to third-party apps. 

In addition, some browser extensions can dramatically impact the performance and speed of your browser. The more extensions you add, the more they nibble away at your system resources. Having too many can cause your browser to slog through ordinarily quick tasks, so if you decide to use a readability browser extension, keep these points in mind. 

Try Originality.AI’s Free Readability Checker

There’s a better way to check readability for free than relying on clunky browser extensions or add-ons. With Originality.AI’s free readability checker, you can do much more than check for readability, but even the readability check is designed to give you a full-featured view of just how understandable your content is. 

Why Use Originality.AI’s Free Readability Checker?

In addition to being free, Originality.AI’s readability checker goes beyond just a basic readability scan to compare your content across multiple readability formulas, giving you a multi-pronged readability analysis. Why so many different formulas and scores? Simply because some readability scores are great for one particular situation, but not so much for another.

For example, the Flesch-Kincaid scale from above is great for assigning a U.S. grade level of readability to your work. But what if you’re outside the U.S.? A readability level of 8th grade might not make much sense. In addition, Flesch-Kincaid is based on texts written in English and therefore would give faulty results on foreign language texts. 

Originality.AI spans a wide range of the most popular readability formulas, so you can see the full picture of how understandable your content is, including: 

Check for Readability, Text Issues and Keyword Density

But we didn’t stop there. Checking for readability is a great start in making sure your content is understandable by your target audience, but text issues can hamper that readability and a low keyword density can keep it from being found by the search engines in the first place.

That’s why Originality’s free readability checker also highlights any text issues that need correction as well as provides the approximate density of various keywords in the document, and it does it all in just a few seconds, with nothing to download or install. 

The Full Picture of Readability and Much More

Using the Originality.AI free readability checker lets you check up to 100 words of text for free. You can also optionally upload a document or paste in a URL. However, if you want to check a larger amount of content just by copying and pasting, you’ll want to try the Premium Originality.AI service.

In addition to letting you scan more content for improved readability across all of the aforementioned readability formulas, you can also optionally check for plagiarism as well as AI-written content. You can perform these checks for as little as 1 cent per 100 words, and opt to check your text or documents across all three services or individually on a : case-by-case basis. 

What’s the Difference Between Originality.AI’s Free Readability Checker and the Paid Version?

The biggest factor that separates the free version of Originality.AI’s readability checker from the premium version is that with the premium version, you’ll get your ideal readability score which, from our recent study on readability and search engine rankings. Given that all of the top ranking sites across thousands of keywords and industries all have similar readability scores, hitting that ideal score directly correlates to a higher ranking in Google. 

Secondly, the free version of the readability checker isn’t available in the API. You can read more about Originality’s API by clicking here. These added benefits are specifically geared toward content creators and publishers and can be invaluable as you work on making your content as authentic as possible. 

The Bottom Line: Should You Use a Free Readability Checker?

Free readability checkers generally only scratch the surface by giving you a general score or grade level; but you’re only getting part of the picture. By leveraging several different readability formulas, you have a much larger and more thorough view of readability as well as other key aspects that it affects such as keyword density for search engine optimization, the use of more complex words when simpler words would suffice and so on. 

Whether you need to check readability of your content in bulk or you want a simple, user-friendly way to ensure your content is not only understandable but also free of plagiarism or the tell-tale signs of AI writing, Originality.AI’s readability checker and full suite of tools can help you check your work with confidence. Try it now!

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

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THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

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