I think readability is in the eye of the reader. JSON is less verbose, no ending tags everywhere, which I think makes it more readable than XML.

But I'd be happy to hear about studies that show evidence for XML being more readable, than JSON.

I disagree that XML is more readable in general, but for the purpose of tagging blocks of text as <important>important</important> in freeform writing, JSON is basically useless

>But I'd be happy to hear about studies that show evidence for XML being more readable, than JSON.

But I’d be happy to hear about studies that show evidence for JSON being readable, than XML.