![Lix]()
What is Lix? Lix is a readability measure, which indicates the difficulty of reading a text. The readability of a text is determined by various factors, including content, form, and the reader's ability to interact with it. Developed in Sweden, by Carl-Hugo Björnsson, Lix was first published in 1968 under the name Lasbarhetsindex, which means "readability". The index is a two-factor measure of text difficulty; a word factor and a sentence factor. The word factor in Lix measures the percentage of long words - those that have six letters or more. This is a much more objective measure than most other formulas, which use a count of syllables, polysyllabic words, and unfamiliar words as judged by a word list. It is also much quicker to compute than other formulas, because the word and sentence factors are weighted equally. This makes it more consistent and reliable, especially if you are using it to categorise books. In addition, Lix was found to be an effective readability measure for foreign languages as well. Several studies compared it with other readability formulas in French, German, Greek, and English. An independent study at Flinders University used Lix to measure the readability of ten books of fiction for upper primary and lower secondary school in Australia, where French and English were both the languages of instruction. The results were very promising. For example, Lix indices in French correlated 0.87 with Flesch indices across languages; and Lix indices in English correlated 0.90.
