Which is easier to read Tabloids or Broadsheets ?

These are my results from counting how many letters there are in every 8th words in the Newspapers.

The Times

Number of letters (x)

Tally

Total (f)

Mean ( x * f ) / 40

~ 3

lllllllllllll

3

26

4 ~ 6

lllllllllll

1

55

7 ~ 9

lllllllllllll

3

04

0 ~ 12

lll

3

33

Total

40

5.8

The Sun

Number of letters (x)

Tally

Total (f)

Mean ( x * f ) / 40

~ 3

lllllllllllllllllllllll

23

46

4 ~ 6

llllllllllllll

4

70

7 ~ 9

lll

3

24

0 ~ 12

0

0

Total

40

3.5

The Daily Mail

Number of letters (x)

Tally

Total (f)

Mean ( x * f ) / 40

~ 3

lllllllllllll

3

26

4 ~ 6

llllllllllll

2

60

7 ~ 9

lllllllllll

1

88

0 ~ 12

llll

4

44

Total

40

5.4

I am now going to work out the Range, Mean, Modal Group, IQ Range, and Median. Although I am only going to find the only IQ Range for the Sentence Length and same goes for the Median.

Range:

The Times - 10

The Sun - 20

The Daily Mail - 9

Mean:

The Times - (rounded up) - 6

The Sun - (rounded up) - 5

The Daily Mail - (rounded up) - 4

Modal Group:

The Time - 8

The Sun - 2

The Daily Mail - 8

* The Range is found by subtracting the highest from the lowest values , by doing this I was left with my answer.

* The Modal Group was found due to it being the most occurring number in the tally charts.

* The Mean is the simplest to find , you add all number up and divide it by the total number there is.

This is a Graph to show the results of the total number of letters in a word

The next thing I am going to do is my Sentence length.

I chose to do 25 sentences to count how many words are on, this was because if I chose 40 sentences is would not be easy to do as there is not 40 sentences in each text.

After writing my results I will create a cumulative frequency graph to show my data as it would be inaccurate if I did it as a bar graph.

The Times

Words in a Sentence

Tally

Total

Cumulative Frequency

~ 5

0

less than 5 = 0

6 ~ 10

lll

3

less than 10 = 3

1 ~ 15

lllll

5

less than 15 = 8

6 ~ 20

lllll

5

less than 20 = 13

21 ~ 25

llllllllllll

2

less than 25 = 25

The Sun

Words in a Sentence

Tally

Total

Cumulative Frequency

~ 5

l

less than 5 = 1

6 ~ 10

llll

4

less than 10 = 5

1 ~ 15

llllllllllll

2

less than 15 = 17

6 ~ 20

lll

3

less than 20 = 20

21 ~ 25

lllll

5

less than 25 = 25

The Daily Mail

Words in a Sentence

Tally

Total

Cumulative Frequency

~ 5

0

less than 5 = 0

6 ~ 10

lll

3

less than 10 = 3

1 ~ 15

llllllll

8

less than 15 = 11

6 ~ 20

lllll

5

less than 20 = 16

21 ~ 25

lllllllll

9

less than 25 = 25

To test my Hypothesis :

Firstly for the Tabloids I said

* They are easier to read - To show this I could use my graph as the smaller the word the easier to read, I can tell that the tabloid paper The Sun had the highest number of small words due to less letters. Therefore this is correct.

* They are shorter articles - Visual wise it was the shortest piece of the three articles, it also had the biggest size words. Therefore this is correct.

* It has shorter words - Yes it has the highest number of less lettered words.

* It has fewer words - Visual wise again yes as I got close to the end of the article when I found my forty words chosen.

Overall I have proved my tabloid hypothesis.

For my Broadsheet I said :

* Longer articles - It was the longest article of the three of them.

* Longer words - Although it has the second longest words in my graph, although as it is a broadsheet and the only one I have chosen then it has long words.

* Harder to read - Visual wise , it seemed to have the smallest writing and also having long words it will make it harder to read compared to The Tabloid .

* More words - Yes it did seem to have more words as when counting every 8th word I finished counting them half way through, in comparison with The Sun then it does have a lot more words.

My hypothesis for the broadsheet is mostly correct but also equal to the middle -brow which I will explain about.

As far as the Middle- Brow goes it is on the graph equal , bigger than and smaller than different ones , this tells me that being a mixture of both from my graph I can tell that :

* It is normal to read.

* It is longer than a tabloid but shorter than a broadsheet.

* For the words I would say that they are all around 3 ~ 8 which is a wide distance apart but yet kept quite simple words.

Therefore I would say that the easiest one to read could be a Middle- Brow as it is more interesting a mixture of tabloids which are simple and a broadsheet being more serious, so The Daily Mail wins all round.

Readability of the newspapers to me depends on the length of the article and the size of the words.

In this case it seems as if The Sun the tabloid is the easier one to read due to it being the shortest article with the smallest words ( 1 ~ 3 ) . As far as the broadsheet goes The Times seems to be the hardest to read as it is the longest one and with the longest words also.

SMOG:

Select a text : This is my chosen text

With one ringing phrase, Tong Blair

Finally buried Old Labour and ushered in

Bold Labour.

"If the old ways work." He says

"they would have worked by

now."

And with that he puts the

unions and the Left back in their

box again.

That's exactly why the sun....

The number of words with 3 syllables is :

3 which are underlined.

Multiply by 3 = 9

Square root = 3

Add 8 = 11

Readability level = this means that it is average to read.

* Weaknesses on this piece of coursework is that really I should be using 40 sentences instead of 25 , but unfortunately I can not due to unable use of the same sentence and not being enough sentences anyway.

* I think that to make it more of a fair test I think we should be able to use 2 of each to give more of a analysis towards the coursework. So then if a middle-brow and a broadsheet came up as the same amount of letter and sentence length then we could compare it so that we can get an average and use that.

* I feel that it doesn't really matter if we use a same editorial, although using different things such as sport article , political article and a gossip article wouldn't be any trouble and also it would avoid bias so we wouldn't need to chose what every nth letter to do.

The Endo

Verity Treverton-Jones 11e