Step 2: Prepare your text for measurement

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

  • preserve the prose sentences and the words within them
  • remove non-prose content from within your text (see table below)

The Spanish Lexile Analyzer determines sentence length through recognition of sentence endings, so sentences must be conventionally punctuated to be recognized. Likewise the Analyzer determines word frequency by recognizing correctly spelled, well-formed words. Otherwise you won't get a useful measure.

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

You should measure: You should not measure:
  • Paragraphs of 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
  • Frontmatter (forewords, prologues, prefaces, tables of contents)
  • Backmatter (afterwords, epilogues, glossaries, indexes, bibliographies)
  • 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 

Additional considerations should be made when editing a text for measurement. 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, such decisions should be carefully considered while preparing your sample text for analysis. 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 Spanish Lexile analysis.

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

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