How To Make Your Writing Easier To Read
Tuesday 22nd June 2010
by Glenn Fisher
Tom Burling, editor of Alternative Profits, came to me with a problem...He works with a lot of very clever people who have some very clever ideas about how to make money.
The problem is those people don’t always know how to communicate those ideas effectively.
It’s a problem I’ve come across myself.
Particularly in the financial world, it seems that instead of trying to get an idea across effectively, people prefer to get it across as pretentiously as possible...
They try to employ as much technical jargon as possible to prove that they’re clever instead of letting the idea itself do the work.
Tom came to me with one guy who had great ideas, but just couldn’t seem to communicate them very well.
You’ll be pleased to know we fixed the problem, and it was a lot simpler than you might think.
In fact, I think you’ll find the solution will help you improve your own writing too.
A helpful tool that anyone can use
Now, to explain how this works it might help if you actually copy and paste the body of this article into Microsoft Word...You see, I want to show you how to set up a helpful little tool on your own computer that will help you write more effectively.
So, open Microsoft Word and either copy and paste this into it or just open something you’ve written yourself.
Done that? Cool.
Now, in Word, click on ‘Tools’ at the top of the page.
Then click on ‘Options’.
And then select the ‘Spelling and Grammar’ tab.
If you look at the list of tick boxes you’ll see ‘Show readability statistics’. Tick the box.
Then, whenever you do a spell check, once you’ve made the changes, a window will come up that gives you a load of information.
Now, most of the information you can ignore. What you’re interested in are the bottom two pieces of information...
The ‘Flesch Reading Ease’ and the ‘Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level’.
The ‘Flesch Reading Ease’ gives you a numerical level of how easy it is to read your piece. And you’re looking for as high a score as possible.
Ideally, you want to be aiming around the 70-80 mark, but a little below that isn’t too bad. Above that, you’re sorted.
But here’s the real indicator that you want to watch out for...
The ‘Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level’, otherwise known as the ‘FK Score’.
Like a good scorecard in Golf, you want to get this figure as low as possible.
As a standard though, you should always aim for this score to below 7.5 - that’s an acceptable level.
But how do you affect these scores?
To explain, let me go back to Tom’s problem...
How to make your writing easier to read
One of the pieces that he wanted me to look at specifically was getting an FK score of around 24. That’s far, far too high.And to make the matter worse, the reading ease for some of the sentences was 0. Pretty shocking.
Don’t get me wrong, the article essentially made sense and the idea behind it had been really well researched and was really good.
But in the current form, the idea was lost because the article was so difficult to read.
To fix it I spoke to the chap who’d written the piece and told him two things...
First I told him about the FK Score and the Reading Ease like I’ve told you here.
I explained that writing with a low FK Score and a high Reading Ease has been proven time and time again to be better received by readers.
He understood and asked how to fix the scores and I told him this...
Rewrite the article as though you were talking about the idea to a mate.
And rather than conclude your research with the idea, start with the idea and use your background research to support it.
Pretty straightforward advice, right?
And, on the face of it, pretty vague.
But there really is no need to complicate it any more than that.
You see, when you forget about writing to impress people...
When you forget about all the jargon you’ve learnt and all the clever and complicated words you use to prove how clever you are...
When you just tell it like it is...
Your writing becomes far more effective.
The focus is no longer on the words you’re using. The focus is now on the idea behind the words.
This guy went away and rewrote the piece. Later that day he sent it over to me and I read it...
I admit, I was apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if my advice would work.
But my word...
The piece was so much better. It was easier to read, more engaging and the idea behind it was stronger for it.
So, the test...
I ran it through the readability statistics.
The FK Score had dropped from around 24 to 11 and the Reading Ease had shot up to the high 50s.
Hey, still not perfect. It needed a bit of work. But on the whole, just that one simple piece of guidance had transformed a piece that was impossible to read into one that communicated an idea so much more effectively.
And the best of it is the few changes the article still needed were just as simple to sort. Later in the week I’ll explain those too.
But the idea to takeaway today is to remember, when it comes to communicating ideas in the written word, you should always keep it as simple as possible...
And to make sure you do, always check those readability statistics to see what you score.
Do so and you’ll be able to communicate your ideas so much more effectively.
Best Wishes,
Glenn Fisher
Editor
Shortcut Bulletin
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This article was originally published in Shortcut Bulletin.
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