Readability of a Rhetorically Linked Expository Paragraph
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A Chain
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This research is part of an attempt to discover significant factors of readability for connected expository prose. Keeping the content of two paragraphs identical, I varied their forms using the Functional Sentence Perspectivists' rule for relating old and new information within the sentences of discourse. The rule-governed form contains a chain of old and new information; in the variant this chain is disrupted. In two tests involving subjective readability decisions, a significant number of 272 high-school subjects found the rule-governed paragraph more readable than the variant. This is additional evidence that we should follow the Functional Sentence Perspectivists' rule in writing discourse.
Keyword(s):
1973 ◽
Vol 16
(2)
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pp. 257-266
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Keyword(s):
Keyword(s):