Linguistic and emotional-valence characteristics of reading passages for clinical use and research

•There is little information on properties of reading passages that affect reading (e.g., arousal and valence).•The three commonly used passages were found to contain emotionally valenced, high arousal, lower familiarity and polysyllabic content words.•The paper provides a new well-balanced (and ranked high on ease of readability) passage that minimizes the impact of these properties.•PWS error rates on a traditional passage and on the novel passage were correlated, yet many individuals showed a large difference between the two.•We suggest a combined procedure, using more than one passage. The details on passage characteristics can inform clinical practice.