Short words No. 1 predictor of readability
Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry spent eight years teaching businesspeople how to write better. As he told Time magazine:
Writing and editing
What’s the best length of a word online?
The New York Times averages 4.9 characters
An editor once counseled me to change all the instances of employment in an article to jobs.
Great advice.… Read the full article
Measure, manage & report readability
4 more ways to use reading ease
Paying attention to readability will help you reach readers, improve communication and boost the bottom line. It can also help you manage writers, win debates during the approval process and report measurable communication success.… Read the full article
What is clarity in writing
Stop these institutional mistakes for readability
Want to make sure you’re not eradicating clarity in your organization?
Slaughter these problems instead, suggest Martin J. Eppler, Ph.D.,… Read the full article
How to improve clarity in writing
5 steps to simplifying your message
How can you clarify your message?
The authors of “Complex to Clear: Managing Clarity in Corporate Communication” developed this CLEAR mnemonic for simplifying your subject:
1.
… Read the full articleMeasure reading levels with readability indexes
How to calculate readability with the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog tests
Since 1847, scholars and others have been measuring how hard copy is to read 1.… Read the full article
What’s the latest U.S. numeracy rate?
Fewer than 10% of U.S. adults are good with numbers
Just 9% of Americans can identify the percentage of men who had more than six years of schooling in 1970 from two stacked-column bar graphs representing how many years of schooling men and women in Mexico have had by decade.… Read the full article
Organize messages for readable writing
Story structure affects readability scores
When you organize your copy logically, readers can read it more easily and get more out of it.
Or so says Bonnie J.… Read the full article
Why is structure important in writing?
Groove HQ: Features increase reading by 520%, readers by 300%
The feature-style story structure attracts 300% more readers and increases reading by 520%, according to an A/B test by Groove HQ.… Read the full article
Are you still using a 150-year-old content writing structure?
The inverted pyramid was born during the Civil War
At about the time these Union soldiers were marching off to war, journalists invented the traditional inverted pyramid news structure. … Read the full article