Readability Matters (Yes, Even for You)

We should all try and be more like Ernest Hemingway. No, you don’t need to write about epic fishing tales, nor do you need to live in Key West with six-toed cats. But Hemingway’s written work has a particular attribute we should all strive for in our writing. Jane Austen’s and Cormac McCarthy’s novels also share this attribute. All three of these world-renowned novelists write at an elementary grade level.

The Old Man and the Sea, which won Hemingway a Pulitzer and was specifically mentioned in his award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is written at a fourth-grade level. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Reading level, while expressed as the grade level someone must have achieved to understand your writing, is really a measure of the clarity of your writing. 

If you reframe your view of readability in this way, it will help you to understand its importance. Plus, when reframed like this, the excuse of “but our readers are sophisticated” doesn’t work anymore. Your readers are sophisticated, so they don’t appreciate clear writing? Everyone appreciates clear writing. Nuclear physicists? Neil deGrasse Tyson? It doesn’t make a difference how smart someone is—they still don’t want to have to work through overly-complicated text.

WHAT IS READABILITY?

Several different measurements can be used for determining the reading level of text. Flesch Kincaid, Gunning Fog, Coleman Liau, the Automated Readability Index, and SMOG (which stands for, I kid you not, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) are the most common.

While they differ slightly in their algorithm, they all look at attributes like sentence length and syllables per word to provide a score in the form of a grade level. A Flesch Kincaid score of 4.5 means someone who has made it halfway through fourth grade should be able to understand your text. For B2B content, the reading level should be at or below a middle-school level (6–9).

Another common measurement is the Flesch Reading Ease score. It also looks at sentence length and syllables but provides a score of up to 100. A higher number indicates the text is easier to read. Some sources describe the reading ease score as being from 0 to 100, but technically that’s not true. Particularly awful writing can earn a negative reading-ease score. Have I seen it? Unfortunately. Does it have to be atrociously bad? Yes. Is it often copy from B2B startups? Also, yes.

SO, I SHOULD DUMB DOWN MY WRITING?

In my years of writing scientific content for the general public and of assessing sales collateral, I have heard similar complaints about readability—“I don’t want to dumb down my writing.” Improving your readability is not dumbing down anything. You’re simply making information easier to digest.

Einstein almost certainly never said, “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” Normally I wouldn’t include a quote of questionable origins, but this one is too good to pass up. Regardless of who said it, it’s an accurate statement, especially where readability is concerned.

Content creators sometimes wonder why they should be writing at an elementary or middle-school level when they know their readers have advanced degrees. Improving readability does not mean making your content appropriate for school-aged children. It simply means making your writing clearer and easier to read.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy writes at a fifth-grade level. That in no way means his writing is appropriate for 10-year-olds. He wrote the novel No Country for Old Men, on which the 2007 Coen brothers film is based. Murder is usually the most palatable thing that happens in his novels. He’s not writing for a young audience. He’s writing for people who don’t want to labor through their reading (which is everyone).

WHY IS READABILITY IMPORTANT?

When we teach sales professionals how to write cold-outreach emails, we always say that they need to write a call to action that is as clear and easy as possible. Any amount of friction, whether it’s too many meeting times to choose from or having to click on a calendar link, makes it less likely a meeting will happen.

The same holds for your writing. Can your prospect read the information written on your website if it’s at a grade level of 15? Yes, of course they can—but they won’t. Any work someone has to do to get through your text is friction that makes them less likely to act.

The Nielsen Norman Group conducted a study with low-literacy readers and high-literacy readers. Study participants in both groups looked at a website in its original form and after it had been redesigned for low-literacy users. They were measured on whether they completed the tasks on the site, how long it took them, and how they rated their satisfaction. Not surprisingly, low-literacy readers accomplished tasks more quickly and reported higher satisfaction on the site designed at a lower reading level.

What was surprising is that higher-literacy individuals also did. Their task completion rate went from 68% to 93%, they completed their tasks in 5.1 minutes vs. 14.3, and their satisfaction rating went from 3.7 to 4.8 (out of 5). Even high-literacy individuals prefer content that is simpler and clearer.

Another reason in favor of increased readability is that it impacts your search-engine rankings. There are so many factors that go into search engine rankings, and readability is one of them. So maybe you are that one special company whose prospects like to challenge themselves by reading confusing copy about a product they don’t even know they need yet. But how are they going to find your company if you don’t show up in their Google search results?

At the beginning of this blog, I suggested thinking about readability not as a grade-level rating but rather as a clarity rating. Another way to think about it is the same way you would a product’s user experience. Even super smart and sophisticated people don’t want products that are difficult to use. You could argue that simplicity is more important to these people.

I mean, Mark Zuckerberg wears the same thing every day so that he doesn’t have to waste time making an extra decision. Surely he appreciates a simplified user experience. So, stop thinking about it as lowering the grade level of your writing. You can think about it as Mark Zuckerberging your content instead. Whatever helps you accept that, yes, even your very special, one-of-a-kind prospects will appreciate easier reading.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING READABILITY

• Break up your copy using bulleted lists. See what I did there?
• Shorten your sentences. Break long sentences into two.
• Stop using longer words when a shorter word works just as well. There is never a reason to use the word “utilize,” for example. “Use” is always enough.
• Stop using jargon. It makes your writing harder to read, and worse, makes your reader feel like an idiot.
• Break up your copy into shorter paragraphs.
• Use subheadings.
• Test your writing! There are loads of readability sites out there. I like this one. It’s simple, provides scores for all five well-known tests, and provides a readability score.
• Say it first, then write it. We generally speak much more simply than we write. If content doesn’t sound similar to how someone would talk, it can probably be simplified.

You are special, and your prospects are special. They are smart, sophisticated, probably even worldly. And I promise you, they, too, appreciate clearer writing.

My Flesch Kincaid score for this blog is 8.03. It probably would have been a little bit lower without “Zuckerberging.” Shoot, now it’s in here twice. I guess we can’t all be Ernest Hemingway, but we can try.

Get a head start on the new year—contact us at mastery@maestrogroup.co to schedule your training!