Information-Theoretic Measures of Reader Enjoyment

Written Communication Oct 1985

Information-Theoretic Measures of Reader Enjoyment

SETH FINN

Abstract

Two studies based on an information theory model of reader enjoyment investigated the role of syntactic and semantic unpredictability in determining readers' evaluations of journalistic prose. In each study, reader enjoyment ratings for a set of articles reporting a single news event were compared with cloze procedure results in which function-word and content-word responses were analyzed separately using entropy and cloze scoring techniques. Both studies revealed a statistically significant correlation between function-word predictability and reader enjoyment. In addition, a strong correlation between content-word unpredictability and reader enjoyment in one study supported the notion that readers prefer texts that are characterized by a high degree of semantic unpredictability.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 1985-10-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088385002004002
Topics: quantitative research multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

FINN (1995)

Measuring Effective Writing

Written Communication

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