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Readability

What Is Reading Comprehension? How Readability Impacts Comprehension

Readability is directly related to reading comprehension because readable content, by design, is easily understandable to a wider range of reading levels.

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Trusted By Industry Leaders

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.

Reading comprehension is the ability to process the information from written text and understand its meaning. 

Readers have varying levels of language knowledge, experience, and skills, so reading comprehension levels vary. 

Writing readable content, by design, aims to increase understanding for a wider range of reading levels.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • Readability refers to how easy it is for readers to understand written text. 
  • Reading comprehension is connected to the reader and how they process and interpret words at a sentence level.
  • Fluency describes how rapidly a reader can understand the words on the page.
  • Reading comprehension and readability are interconnected and an important consideration when writing marketing content for a wide audience.

To check the readability of your content before publication, try the Originality.ai Readability Checker, then catch spelling or grammatical errors with our AI Grammar Checker.

Reading Comprehension: Words and Sentences

To understand written content, a reader must be able to recognize the individual words on a page, know the individual meaning of each word, and comprehend the collective meaning of the words written together in a sentence. 

According to the ETS (a leading educational testing and assessment platform), identifying individual words is also referred to as decoding. It refers to understanding letters, pronunciation, and meaning. 

Comprehending at the sentence level involves knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. A reader’s understanding of the parts and how they work together impacts their ability to grasp the meaning of the whole. 

Reading Fluency vs. Reading Comprehension

According to the National Center on Improving Literacy, reading fluency is a key part of reading comprehension. Specifically, fluency deals with the mechanics of reading. 

A reader’s fluency refers to how quickly and accurately they can read the words in front of them

It also includes whether a reader can read smoothly and with expression. Fluent reading is a building block to comprehension.

How Is Reading Comprehension Measured?

There are many variations of reading comprehension measurement. Education Week notes that many reading comprehension tests involve reading a passage of text and then answering questions based on what was read. 

Some assessments ask questions after reading, others during reading. Both approaches strive to measure how well a reader has processed and understood the meaning of the written content. 

Schools used standardized tests and national and state benchmarks to measure the reading comprehension levels of individual students and median reading levels of all students. 

These levels are also recorded at the state and national levels. Some tests produce scores in terms of reading level, such as Lexile scores that help individuals select level-appropriate books.

Collectively, reading levels at the national or state level are referred to as literacy rates or literary proficiency. 

Literary proficiency is monitored and discussed within many contexts: education, publishing, and marketing, for example. These cumulative reading levels are typically referred to by educational grade levels (K-12 and beyond).

Factors That Impact Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension varies from person to person because so many factors go into how easily and quickly someone can process the meaning of the written words in front of them. 

Some of these factors include a reader’s level of knowledge with:

  • Vocabulary
  • Language fluency
  • Grammar and structure
  • Learning strategies
  • Connection making
  • The topic
  • The style of writing

Not to mention factors that can vary for a single reader, such as mood, interest, reading environment, and motivation. 

Interpreting and understanding what we read takes focus. Anything that impacts our focus, including how content is written, can impact reading comprehension.

How Writing Impacts Reading Comprehension

Writing is integral to discussions of reading comprehension because words can be put on the page in different ways. 

How something is written directly relates to how easily a reader can understand it

Sentences and paragraphs can vary in:

  • Vocabulary
  • Complexity
  • Structure
  • Length
  • Density
  • Focus
  • Voice
  • Quality
  • Accessibility
  • Organization

How these criteria relate to a reader’s ability to comprehend written content is referred to as readability.

What Is Readability and How Does It Impact Comprehension?

Readability means how easily written text can be understood by readers. 

Whereas reading comprehension is connected to the reader, readability is connected to the writing itself. 

If text is written in complex language with advanced vocabulary, it stands to reason that the written material will require a certain level of reading comprehension to grasp its meaning quickly and easily. 

When text is written simply with common words, more people can comprehend it easily. That is, it is accessible to a wider range of reading comprehension levels. 

Content written to reach a broader range of reading comprehension levels is considered to have higher readability. Part of achieving good readability is writing to the average reading level. 

Studies in the U.S. have found that the average adult reading level is estimated to be around the sixth grade or a low reading level.  

Typical elements of text with high readability include:

  • Vocabulary: Clear, simple language, common words, no jargon.
  • Sentence length: Varied lengths, but 15 to 20 words maximum. 
  • Paragraph length: 2 to 3 sentences per paragraph, focused on one idea.
  • Active voice: Passive voice is usually wordier and more difficult to read.
  • Clear organization: Easy to follow and not dense. 

When a writer takes the time to address readability in writing, it can go a long way toward improving reading comprehension for readers. 

Why Create Reader-Focused Writing

Considering reading comprehension and readability in writing is part of creating reader-focused content. 

In all writing, it’s essential to keep your readers in mind to ensure you are doing your best to reach them. This is particularly true in marketing writing. 

When creating marketing content, you must know your audience and do all you can to attract, engage, and retain them. This is a key reason why monitoring readability is important in marketing

The very first step in communicating with your audience is being easily understood. 

Keeping reading comprehension and readability in mind is like giving yourself a superpower to connect with more of your audience. 

Conveniently review the readability of your content with the Originality.ai Readability Checker.

Then, learn more about readability in our top guides:

Originality.ai Writers

Our experienced team of writers at Originality.ai are passionate about creating innovative and compelling content across a range of topics, from grammar guides to readability, content marketing, and more!

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.

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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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