TextQuest/Refo is available as a desktop application for Windows and MacOS. Different licences are available depending on the application.

TextQuest analyses a text with one or more readability formulas. These have been developed for various:

  • Languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Turkish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish, Czech, Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian.
  • Readers: children, young people, adults, foreign learners, soldiers, patients.
  • Text types: fictional, non-fictional, technical manuals, school books, children's books

The results depend on the particular formula:

  • Index value: it is usually between 0 and 100, the higher the value, the more comprehensible the text.
  • Reading age: shows the minimum age required for text comprehension.
  • Reading level: the minimum grade in the US school system required for text comprehension.

All groups of text genres and recipients: Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Foreign Language Learners (2), French, Icelandic, Italian (3), Norwegian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish

Other languages and their combinations:

  • Portuguese: all text genres and children older than 10 years
  • Durch/Flamish/Afrikaans: all groups of text genres and recipients (3), non-fictional texts and children younger than 10 years, fictional texts and children older than 10 years, all texts and children older than 10 years, children's books and children younger than 10 years
  • Spanish: all groups of text genres and recipients (6), children's books and children younger than 10 years
  • Polish: non-fictional texts
  • Turkish: all groups of text genres and recipients , school books and children younger than 10 years
  • English: all groups of text genres and recipients (15), prose (2), school books for children's book and children older than 10 years (3), school books for children's book and children younger than 10 years (2), school book, children's books for children younger than 10 years (3), technical and soldiers (5)
  • German: all groups of text genres and recipients (7), prose and children older than 10 years, fictional texts and children younger than 10 years (3), fictional texts and children older than 10 years (2), political texts, children younger than 10 years, prose and children older than 10 years, non-fictional texts and children younger than 10 years (4)
  • patient leaflet information: Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, French, Italian, Spanish (3), Sloven, English (11), German

TextQuest shows the results in another window and informs about the interpretation of the results. These can be processed further via the clipboard.

What does it do?

Analysing the comprehensibility of texts on the basis of readability formulae

Who needs it?

Anyone who wants to write comprehensible texts: Authors, technical editors, publishers, SEOs, website operators, pharmaceutical companies, teachers, students

What results are shown?

Comprehensibility values depending on the selected language, text type and recipients as an index value, reading level or reading age for the entire text and each section individually.

How are the results processed further?

They can be exported as a CSV file or via the clipboard.

How can I improve comprehensibility with TextQuest/ReFo?

  • You can compare the values for each text section with each other
  • Display sentences that are too long and words that are too long, highlighted in colour
  • Standardise the use of words and their synonyms with the vocabulary module, identify phrases
  • Generate word lists that do not contain words that do not make sense (articles, pronouns, conjunctions, etc.), taking the language into account Display all words found in built-in word lists such as Dale/Chall or Spaulding.

Why should I use TextQuest/ReFo and not some other (free) program?

  • It supports more languages than any other software
  • The appropriate readability formulas are selected for the desired combination of language, text type and recipient
  • exception lists are used for the readability formulas for syllable counting, for English a list from Carnegie-Mellon University
  • for other languages, exceptions are taken into account for the number of syllables - up to words of 9 syllables
  • for enumerations, individual bullet points are counted as separate sentences - otherwise sentences that are far too long would be used for the calculation, which would distort the result
  • For word lists such as Dale-Chall or Spaulding, not only the basic forms but all forms of the respective words are counted. These words in the text can also be displayed.
  • takes into account the decomposition into grammatical sentences:
    • quotations and direct speech
    • abbreviations consisting of more than one letter. Appropriate lists are built in for each language, up to 3000 entries for German and English, for example.
    • Recognizes headings as sentences without the need to insert a period at the end of the heading.
Click on the preview pictures to see the whole picture.

Startup screen

Selection of languages

Selection of text genre

Selection of recipients

Results

Vocabulary sorted by alphabet ascending

Vocabulary sorted by alphabet descending

Words with 7 or more letters