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Readability

How to Check Readability in Google Docs

One of the best ways to determine whether or not your readers can understand your content is by analyzing its readability. When information is presented in a way that’s easy to comprehend, it’s retained more easily by your readers. However, there are different levels of readability depending on your target audience.

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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.

One of the best ways to determine whether or not your readers can understand your content is by analyzing its readability. When information is presented in a way that’s easy to comprehend, it’s retained more easily by your readers. However, there are different levels of readability depending on your target audience. You wouldn’t expect a 10-year-old to be able to read and understand a research study on nuclear physics, so readability comes into play as a way for you to “gauge” how understandable your content is. 

The problem is, how do you measure this kind of comprehension? Various formulas have been created over the years, measuring everything from the number of syllables in a word to the length of sentences and everything in between in an attempt to give content creators some general idea as to how readable their content is and which age range is best served by it. 

Many word processing programs like Microsoft Office Word and many online tools like Originality.ai’s own free text readability analyzer, can analyze your writing and provide you with these scores, but how do you check readability in Google Docs? 

Check Readability in Google Docs

Google Docs surprisingly does not have a built-in readability analyzer. There are some browser extensions available for Google Chrome that attempt to solve this issue, but as with any extension, you can’t be fully sure of what it is you’re actually adding to Chrome, and some extensions can do more harm than good by, for example, slowing down your browser or collecting private information as you browse. 

With this in mind, we don’t recommend downloading a browser extension to check readability in Google Docs. There’s a better way to check readability (and much more) and it works with text you’ve written in Google Docs. Here’s how to do it, step-by-step:

Step 1: Select the Text in Google Docs

You can either highlight the text with the mouse if you only want to check the readability of certain sections, or you can press Ctrl+A (or Command+A on Mac) to select all of the text.

Step 2: Copy the Text

The next step is to copy the text, which you can do by pressing Ctrl+C (or Command+C on Mac). It will appear as if nothing has happened but the text has been copied internally to the clipboard. 

Step 3: Open Originality.ai’s Text Readability Checker

Visit https://originality.ai/readability-checker. The readability checker will load and the page will look like this:

Originality.AI’s free text readability checker
Originality.ai’s free text readability checker

Step 4: Paste the text

In the text field where it says “Enter at least 100 words of text then click Analyze, place your mouse cursor (you can click backspace to get rid of that default text), then press Ctrl+V (or Command+V on Mac) to paste in the text you selected previously. 

The result will look something like this:

Checking readability using a article
Checking readability using this article as example text

You’ll notice at the bottom that you’ll get a quick word count. You can click the green Analyze button from here to analyze the text or check out the FAQ if you have questions. 

Analyze Readability of a Google Doc: What the Colors Mean

Within just a few seconds you’ll see the text box highlighted with several different colors. To the right, you’ll also get an approximate U.S. grade level for your writing per the Flesch Kincaid readability formula. For example, this article is designed to be easily understood at a 9th grade reading level or above, so around 15 years old or older, which is a general readability goal to hit for most types of content.

Analyze Readability of a Google Doc

The highlighted text has a color coded key below the Analyze and FAQ buttons which will show you which words and sentences are hard or very hard to read and that may be worth revising if you need to adjust the text for a broader readability range. 

What Else Does the Readability Test Tell You?

Originality.ai’s Google Docs readability checker, in addition to telling you your Flesch Kincaid Grade Level in terms of readability, also offers you several other options to get the full picture of your content’s readability, including: 

Text Scores

Beyond the Flesch Kincaid readability grade level, you’ll also see how your text readability performs according to other types of formulas as well, including: 

As with the words themselves, the red highlighted scores are higher grade levels, with the orange scores in the middle, and green scores for lower grade levels.

color-coded reading formulas based on a text analysis
An example of color-coded reading formulas based on a text analysis

Text Issues

Text issues will tell you some of the core analytics behind your content, including:

  • Average syllables per word
  • Average words per sentence
  • Average words per paragraph
  • Average sentences per paragraph
  • Average characters per word
  • Words with > 4 syllables
  • % of words with > 4 syllables
  • Words with > 12 letters
  • % of words with > 12 letters

Do you actually need to know all of this if you just want to check readability in Google Docs? No, but it does help you to get the full picture of readability according to different types of scales and formulas, and that is important to keep your audience engaged and interested in what you have to say. 

Text Stats

If you’d like the specifics about your text, you can click the Text Stats tab to see similar information including your longest sentence, number of paragraphs, the average speaking time, reading time and much more. If you’re writing content that someone else is going to read, it’s a good idea to keep these stats in mind to help make it easier for them to read your content. 

Keyword Density

A must for optimizing your content for the search engines, the Keyword Density checker will tell you your top 10 keywords and phrases (double keywords). 

All of these built-in options make the free readability checker from Originality.ai the best way to check readability in Google Docs. 

Upgrade to the Premium Version of Originality.ai For More Features

Did you know that checking readability of your Google Doc is just one of the things you can do with Originality.ai? You can also check for plagiarism and check for AI-written content in just a few clicks using the premium version of Originality.ai. With prices as low as 1 cent per 100 words scanned, you can optionally scan for plagiarism and/or AI-writing on a case by case basis, and with a built-in top-up feature, you never have to worry about running out of credits when you need them. 

Try it now for yourself and get the full picture of your document’s readability and originality!

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.

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In The Press

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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