I insist on understandable text. I want writers to change obscure terms to everyday words, and to shorten long phrases in order to increase readability. But do these things really improve understanding? Many external factors such as the reader’s previous knowledge have an impact on comprehension. Britt-Louise Gunnarsson found when examining legal language that basic editing changes didn’t make the legal text much easier to understand. To read is to work through different levels – first characters, then words, and then sentences – in order to interpret the text as a whole. At the final stage of comprehension, the reader will realize the action that the text is leading him to. In her research, Gunnarsson found that changes in the lower levels of the text did not improve comprehension. Changes need to focus on higher concerns – for example, the perspective from which the content is approached. The usual readability factors affect superficial understanding, while the perspective enables deeper understanding. What this meant for legal texts, according to Gunnarsson, is that comprehension improved when issues were examined from a citizen’s viewpoint, not from the court’s.