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Gunning Fog Index is used to estimate the readability of a sentence. Is the website gunning-fog-index.com reliable for academic research purposes? If not, what software should I use?

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  • Is it really a "calculater"?
    – Alex B.
    May 27, 2018 at 22:00
  • @AlexB. Isn't it? What would you call such software?
    – Juya
    May 29, 2018 at 10:51
  • Shouldn’t it be a calculator?
    – Alex B.
    May 30, 2018 at 3:32
  • @AlexB.You are right. It was a typo. Edited it immediately.
    – Juya
    May 30, 2018 at 11:47

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The website clearly does not fulfill the requirements of Reproducible Research. The algorithm is not Open Source and the implementation isn't available for inspection.

There are more problems:

  • The Website can go away without prior notice
  • The implementation of the algorithm may change without notice

When you cannot find an Open Source implementation of the Gunning-Fox index, do it yourself. After all, the formula is not overly complex (though counting sentences and counting "complex words" can be tricky).

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  • I am calculating the index for +30 sentences separately. Do you know any reliable software for this?
    – Juya
    May 24, 2018 at 11:45
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    Disclaimer: I have no connections to this one and I did not test it, but I think this is worth looking at: pypi.org/project/readability/0.2
    – Sir Cornflakes
    May 24, 2018 at 11:50
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    There's a newer version of this now at PyPi, this link should always point to the most recent version.
    – Sir Cornflakes
    Jul 7, 2022 at 11:49

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