The number and type of arguments about readability as a justification, or an opinion, or an opinion about an opinion seems counter-productive to reaching conclusions efficiently. I think they are very important either way, but the justifications used are not rich enough in information to be very useful. A study has been done regarding readability in code which may serve as insight into this issue. Please see page 8, fig 9 for a nice chart of the results, note the negative/positive coloring of the correlations, grey/black respectively. https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/p/weimer-tse2010-readability-preprint.pd... The criteria in the paper can be applied to assess an increase or decrease in readability between current and proposed changes. Perhaps even an automated tool could be implemented based on agreed upon criteria. Opinions about readability can be shifted from: - "Is it more or less readable?" to - "This change exceeds a tolerance for levels of readability given the scope of the change." Still need to argue "exceeds ...given" and "tolerance", but at least the readability score exists, and perhaps over time there will be consensus. Note this is an attempt to impact rhetoric in PEP (or other) discussions, not about supporting a particular PEP. Please consider this food for thought to increase the efficacy and efficiency of PEP discussions, not as commenting on any specific current discussion, which of course is the motivating factor of sending this email today. I think using python implicitly accepts readability being partially measurable, even if the resolution of current measure is too low to capture the changes currently being discussed. Perhaps using this criteria can increase that resolution. Thank you, - Matt