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A page from our Readability brochure.
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Every so often a program comes along that changes the way we do
things.  Spelling checkers have made typos a venial sin,  Now,
thanks to Readability, there's no excuse for writing a report or
article that isn't suited to its audience.

Although style checkers have been around since the early 1980's,
none gave become smash best sellers.  Why?  Because buyers have
recognized that they've all had a major flaw.

Until now, all style checkers have implicitly assumed that "good
writing is good writing."  They haven't been programmed to ask
the writers why something has been written, and they haven't been
able to take the purpose into account in their calculations. 

This has caused the analyses produced by these programs to have a
disturbing "sameness" about them.  In fact, the "advice" these
programs give is the same whether they're evaluating a bedtime
story for 8-year olds, or a treatise for Ph.D.'s.

Readability solves this problem.  It's the first style checker
programmed to recognize that there's no such thing as an "ideal"
writing style.  It "knows" that different writing styles are
needed for different audiences and purposes.

Like the other programs it can produce an analysis based on a
model of what's called all-purpose writing.  But it can also do
analyses based on ideal models for newspaper articles,
advertising copy, novels, magazine feature stories, children's
books and technical reports.  It even includes 2 models for which
the objective is to score as low as possible.  These are
government reports and bureaucratic gobbledygook.  Although you
may be a bureaucrat, dean, or vice president, you needn't write
like one!

Readability is unique in many other ways.  Rather than just
compute a single readability index, it computes 6 different ones. 
For instance, it computes a "bricks to mortar ratio." "Bricks"
are the more difficult information-laden words and "mortar" are
the 400 most common words in the English language.  In general
purpose writing about 60% of the words you use should be
"mortar."  But if you're writing for students or blue collar
workers, that percentage should be even higher.  


Readability also looks at the way you've mixed long and short
sentences in your text, and the percentage of sentences
containing only short words.  Controlling these factors may
determine whether the reader goes beyond page 1.


Finally, Readability looks at each of your sentences
individually.  It classifies each as being one of nine types. 
Some types, like Simple and Elegant, are almost always desirable. 
Others, such as Complicated and Pompous, should usually be
changed.

"All this sounds really good, but are these claims true?  Can
this program possibly be as useful and as easy-to-use as you
claim?"

Thanks to our 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee, you can
easily find out.  Call our 24-hour toll free order line,
1-800-288-SCAN, Ext. 982, and order a copy for 74.90 ($69.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping a& handling).  We accept Mastercard, Visa and
American Express.  When Readability arrives a few days later, see
for yourself.

If you're disappointed, send it back.  We'll mail your refund the
same day we receive the package.  But if it's as good as we say,
tell others in your organization about it.  They'll bee amazed
what it can do for them.