Step 2: Prepare your text for measurement

In preparing a text for Lexile measurement, your two basic objectives are to:

  • keep all complete sentences
  • remove all non-prose content (see table below)

The Lexile Analyzer needs to recognize sentence endings, so sentences must be conventionally punctuated and complete. Likewise, the Analyzer needs to recognize correctly spelled, well-formed words. Otherwise you won't get a useful measure.

Here are some general guidelines for removing non-prose from your text:

You should measure: You should not measure:
  • Paragraphs of standard prose
  • Captions that are complete sentences
  • Bulleted/numbered lists in which the list items are complete sentences
  • Dialogue; sentences within quotation marks
  • Numbers and dates
  • Acronyms
  • Foreign words
  • Names
  • Parenthetical phrases or clauses within sentences
  
  • Incomplete sentences
  • Sentences with unconventional punctuation
  • Page headers and footers, page numbers
  • Chapter and section titles
  • Captions that are incomplete sentences
  • Headings and sub-headings
  • Bulleted/numbered lists in which the list items are incomplete sentences
  • The leading name and colon conventionally used in interview notation
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Poetry/song extracts
  • URLs
  • Tables and graphs
  • Abbreviations
  • Phonetic pronunciation guides
  • Parentheses which contain complete sentences
  • Frontmatter (forewords, prologues, prefaces, tables of contents)
  • Backmatter (afterwords, epilogues, glossaries, indexes, bibliographies)

Historical notes, introductions, "About the author" pieces, and previews of the next book in a series should typically be removed. Such text is often written separately from the main text. However, some frontmatter and backmatter may be a legitimate part of the larger text and should be included. As a general guideline, if text appears to be written by the same author for the same audience, then it should be included for Lexile analysis.

>> Go on to Step 3: Type or scan your text

<< Go back to Step 1: What kinds of texts can be measured