By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is scannable formatting scored?
Scannable formatting is worth 9 of 100 points, 9 of the 60 in the Selected lever, which asks “Is there a passage worth quoting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 3 points for at least one bulleted or numbered list with two or more items. Paragraphs that enumerate in prose (“first… second… finally…”) are named in the fix text.
- 2 points for at least one table.
- 2 points when 70% of paragraphs are 80 words or fewer.
- 2 points for at least 2 emphasised key terms: bold, mark or inline code.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | A comparison of three espresso grinders as a table with columns for price, burr type and grind settings. Each row survives extraction with its column labels. |
| Fail | The same comparison as a paragraph: “The first grinder costs more but has conical burrs, while the second, which is cheaper, uses flat burrs…”. After extraction, nothing ties a price to a grinder. |
How do you fix scannable formatting?
In the order worth doing it:
- Turn any sentence that counts (“first”, “second”, “finally”) into a numbered list.
- Turn any comparison of two or more items across the same attributes into a table.
- Bold the two or three terms a reader should remember from each section, and no more.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Selected lever
- What is answer-first writing? — 13 points
- What makes a passage extractable by an AI engine? — 10 points
- Do headings matter for AI search? — 9 points
- Why do AI engines prefer pages with numbers in them? — 8 points
- Does an FAQ section help you get cited? — 7 points
- Which schema types help with AI citation? — 4 points
Frequently asked questions
Do AI engines read HTML tables?
Yes. Tables are parsed as structured rows, so a value stays attached to its row and column labels when the table is chunked, which prose cannot guarantee.
Can a page have too many lists?
For readers, yes. The check rewards having structure where the content is structured; it does not award more points for more lists, so converting real prose into bullets gains nothing.