English

Quantifying literature quality using complexity criteria

Computation and Language 2017-01-17 v4

Abstract

We measured entropy and symbolic diversity for English and Spanish texts including literature Nobel laureates and other famous authors. Entropy, symbol diversity and symbol frequency profiles were compared for these four groups. We also built a scale sensitive to the quality of writing and evaluated its relationship with the Flesch's readability index for English and the Szigriszt's perspicuity index for Spanish. Results suggest a correlation between entropy and word diversity with quality of writing. Text genre also influences the resulting entropy and diversity of the text. Results suggest the plausibility of automated quality assessment of texts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.7077,
  title  = {Quantifying literature quality using complexity criteria},
  author = {Gerardo Febres and Klaus Jaffe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.7077},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Submitted for publication. 29 pages. 8 figures, 4 tables, 4 appendixes

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:55:59.861Z