Legibility (sociology)
Etymology
From Latin legibilis, "readable" (legere, "to read"). Its everyday meaning is just "able to be read." The political theorist James C. Scott extended it: states make society "legible" by simplifying it into records and categories they can process — often steamrolling the local knowledge that made it work.
noun · /lej-ih-BIL-ih-tee/
The degree to which something messy and human has been reshaped so an institution can read, count, and manage it.
What it names
Why bureaucracies flatten the world — standard surnames, street grids, single official languages — to make people and places countable from the center.
Example
Assigning everyone a permanent ID number made the population legible to the state, for better and worse.
Related idea
Closely tied to the Procrustean impulse — legibility often means forcing variety into standard boxes.
noun · /lej-ih-BIL-ih-tee/
How easily writing or print can be read, given the clarity of its letters and layout.
What it names
The plain quality of a text or typeface that lets the eye make out each character and word without strain.
Example
The form’s tiny gray font badly hurt its legibility.
Related idea
This everyday sense concerns the reader’s eye; the sociological sense concerns an institution’s eye. Legibility is often paired with readability, which is about how easily connected prose flows, not just whether letters are distinct.