Despite good reliability and equivalence in construction and degree of difficulty, a statistically significant difference in reading speed can occur between long paragraphs. Since statistical significance should be dependent only on the persons tested, either standardizing long paragraphs for statistical equality of reading speed measurements or increasing the number of presented paragraphs is recommended for comparative investigations.

The present study indicates that the 28 selected English sentence optotypes are comparable in terms of both lexical difficulty as well as in reading length, and it demonstrates the validity and reliability of such sentences as test items for determining reading parameters such as reading acuity and speed.

The rad-rd is an accurate, automated computer program for measuring reading time. Stopwatch measurements, although subject to inaccuracy from several sources, remain a reliable and simple method for analysis of reading performance.

A considerable percentage of patients with monofocal IOLs read newspaper print size without glasses under good light conditions.

Purpose: To develop 27 short sentence optotypes for the Portuguese version of the Radner Reading Charts. Methods: Thirty-four Portuguese sentences were constructed following the con cept of the Radner Reading Charts to obtain highly comparable sentences in terms of lexical difficulty, syntactical complexity, word length, number of syllables, and position of words. A long text (106 words) at the 5 th grade reading level was also tested to assess the validity of the reading speeds obtained with the short sentences. The short sentences and long text were tested in 50 volunteers with similar educational backgrounds (mean age 30.98 years ± 6.99 years, range 19-47 years). Reading speeds were measured with a stop-watch and reported as words per minute (wpm). The reading time for each of the short sentences to be selected for the chart was defined as falling within the range of the mean ± 0.40 × standard deviation (SD). Results: The overall mean reading speed for each of the short sentences was 235.43 ± 36.39 wpm. The 27 sentences with a mean between 220.8 and 250.0 wpm (overall mean ± 0.40 × SD) were selected for construction of the reading charts. The mean reading speed for the long text was 212.42 ± 26.20 wpm. Correlation between the selected short sentences and long text was high (r =0.86). Reliability analysis yielded an overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.97. Conclusions:The 27 short Portuguese sentences were highly comparable in terms of syntactical structure, number, position and length of words, lexical difficulty, and reading length. This reading test can overcome the limitations of the current tests for homogeneity and comparability, reducing subjectivity in the evaluation of the functional outcomes of medical and surgical ophthalmologic treatments. Keywords