Comparative Assessment of Document Usability With Writing Quality Measures
http://www.stc.org/confproceed/1994/PDFs/PG216218.PDF

Krull, Robert
STC Proceedings
1994

Abstract:

Measures of writing quality were developed on the basis of research findings on reading, writing, and cognition. From among the over twenty measures developed by the quality project, this paper illustrates theoretical and methodological issues for two kinds of measures: agents of action in sentences and task-oriented headings. When applied to a sample set of documents, these measures showed the writing to be inconsistent in style among the documents and only partly in conformance with suggestions derived from research. Though technical communication writing guidelines may be well thought out and grounded in years of practice, to have credibility in the new quality environment, writing guidelines need to be supported by testing. This paper discusses the development and testing of document quality measures that can be used as the basis of writing guidelines. The measures were tested both by using them to score technical documents, which will be discussed here, and laboratory testing with document users, which will not be discussed in this paper.