Note to gov: don’t make your texts too simple
The Dutch government aims to keep their texts simple and clear. This as part of its policy to make its contents accessible without discrimination. In order to achieve this goal, a lot of texts and forms are being reviewed on their complexity and readability, guidelines are created on how to write readable simple texts and a lot of research on text readability is being conducted. Bureau Taal (The Language Agency) has written a very nice booklet on language readability and levels of understanding. Basically, there are 4 levels, with 2 sublevels. A1 being the most simple text, and D2 the most complex. European Research indicated that most government texts are written in C1 and C2 level, while only 15% of the population fully understands those texts.
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