Data from two studies were used to compare a limited-cloze procedure with the regular cloze procedure. The limited-cloze procedure differed from the regular cloze in one feature: the words deleted were randomly ordered and placed at the top of the test. For both studies the same passage was used to construct a regular cloze passage and an identical limited-cloze passage with the deleted words at the top. Subjects in each study were randomly assigned to two groups, one of which completed the regular cloze and the other which completed the limited-cloze. The limited-cloze was found to be as valid, reliable, objective, and practical a test as regular cloze, but less interpretable.
