Readability of Tabloid, Quality, and Broadsheet Newspapers

I am going to investigate the readability of three different types of newspapers, a tabloid, a quality, and a broadsheet paper.

The tabloid paper seems to be easier to read than the other two papers. The Guardian is probably the most complicated and uses the most sophisticated language but this is only in my opinion, I will have to prove whatever I think.

I will have to use many different types of graph to display and compare my data e.g. cumulative frequency, scatter diagrams, histograms. The data I gather will be discrete data, as a set of values will be given.

To conduct my research correctly I will have to do a range of averages e.g. box plot, pie chart.

I will use a stratified sample and gather 10% of a particular article on a particular newspaper. To try and make my results more accurate I will compare back page articles as well as front-page articles, so altogether I will have to analyse six separate articles and hope to gather conclusive results.

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PREDICTION

I predict that the broadsheet will have more letters per word, as the language seems to be more intellectual. Just by looking at a few articles I could see clearly that the text was slightly smaller compared with that of the quality and tabloid newspapers. The broadsheet seemed to be the most difficult to read followed by the quality paper, so it probably has more words per area/article. Two areas from each paper will be investigated and only a fixed 10% of text will be gathered to keep the investigation fair.

ANALYSIS

From the tables I made for the different types of newspaper I could see that the 3 newspapers slotted into place. The quality paper had the most letters per word followed by the tabloid and surprisingly the Broadsheet had the least number of letters per word. This was the same on the front and back pages. From the averages I found that the median for the broadsheet was smaller than both the tabloids and the quality paper. The broadsheet had a median of 5 letters per word compared with the tabloids 7letters per word and the quality papers 8letters per word.

The mode was also smaller, the guardian had a mode of 2 letters per word, the quality paper had a mode of 3 letters per word and the mirror had a mode of 4letters per word. These averages show that the guardian has the least letters per word but has the most words per area. To make it a fair test I took a stratified sample of 10% for each article to be investigated. The broadsheet had a total of 1568b words in the 10% investigated; the daily mail had a total of 1514 word followed by the tabloid which ha 1366 words in the 10% investigated.

The tabloids front page had an area of 1082.5cm� which was smaller than the quality papers 1188cm�. The broadsheet had a front page twice as big as the tabloids front page with an area of 2217cm�. The quality papers headline took up a larger percentage than both the tabloids and the broadsheets. The quality papers headline took up 33.3% (1/3) of the front page, the tabloids headline took up 12% of the front page whilst the broadsheet took up 5.6% of the front page. The broadsheet had many separate headlines as well as a main headline due to the size of the paper it will be inappropriate to use up the same percentage as the quality newspapers headline. I personally think the more serious and problematic an article is; the more area the headline will take up, the larger the headline the more appealing it will be to the reader.

The upper quartile range for the broadsheet is 6 and the lower is 2 giving the broadsheet an inter-quartile range of 4 letters peer word. Whereas the quality paper has an upper range of 6 and lower of 3 giving it an inter-quartile range of. The tabloid had an upper quartile of 6 and a lower of 3 giving it an inter-quartile range of 3. The broadsheet has the largest inter-quartile range; this suggests it has a larger variety of words than the other two papers. I think the cumulative frequency ideally provides a reliable conclusion as I gathered.

EVALUATION

From my research I can say my prediction is partially correct as the broadsheet did have more words per specific area but it had less letters per word. I found the broadsheet paper also had a larger variety of words, which partly proves my initial prediction, which I made from the comparisons between the three cumulative frequency graphs. The tabloid and the quality paper had very similar wording but the tabloid was less in depth and was more straightforward in it's appearance.

The broadsheet had more words in the 10% investigated then both the tabloid and quality paper. The quality paper had the longest words. From the averages the quality paper had an average median of 8 letters per word followed by the tabloids 7 letters per word and the broadsheets 5 letters per word.

My prediction was partially correct as I predicted the broadsheet will have the most words in the area I was going to investigate and I was correct.

To improve my results I could try analysing more newspapers, which would have my investigation more accurate, I could have also analysed a larger number of articles in a particular page and compared them.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion the broadsheet had the most words I the 10% of the article I investigated followed by the mirror and then the quality paper. The text font was also considerably smaller, which could have affected my results drastically. The quality paper had the most letters per word followed by the tabloid and surprisingly the broadsheet had the least letters per word. So I gathered that the guardian is the easiest to read as it had the least letters per word.