Improving the Readability of Your Writing

What is readability? Essentially, it’s how easy it is for readers to read your writing. Improving the readability of your writing helps your reader to comprehend what you’re saying more accurately in less time.

Figuring the readability of writing began in the late 19th century in the U.S. Schools didn’t use graded or grade level materials until around 1847. Somehow teachers expected students to learn to read all on the same level. This probably came about because so many schools were one-room affairs with students from all grade levels in attendance. And while educators established graded reading levels for students, no one ever paid attention to the reading level of adults until the U.S. military took a stab at it. They found that in 1937 general adult readers had limited reading ability.

In 1921, Edward Thorndike published his landmark book, The Teacher’s Word Book. In it, he noted the frequency of difficult words used in general literature. For the first time, a notable scholar suggested a means to measure difficult words through mathematical formulas. He showed that overall reading comprehension is directly related to the number of difficult words in any piece of writing. 

So how does this relate to your writing? While you may not know the reading level of what you write, you can take these steps to ensure that it’s readable to the majority of adult readers. Believe it or not, the average reading level in the U.S. is tenth grade. That means there are readers who read above that level and also those who read below it. The more educated a certain group of readers is, the higher their reading level.

As a writer, you can’t assume that everyone that reads your work has gone to college. Depending on your target audience, chances are that about half have done so.

To make your writing more readable, follow these simple steps:

Focus on Your Reader. Who will be reading your writing—young adults, men, women, seniors? Find out as much as you can about your readers' education, reading habits, age, sex, occupational background, and so on. Even knowing the likes of "the general reader" is better than writing in a vacuum. Analyze the advertisements in the publication you intend to write for to help you discover your what your readers like.

Focus on Your Purpose. Why are you writing? What do you expect your readers to do? Read your piece casually? Study it? Use it for reference? Read it for entertainment during leisure hours? Be sure of what you are trying to do and write accordingly.

Design Your Writing to Fit. Once you know your audience and your purpose, you can design your piece of writing to fit. Ordinarily, this means that you start raising your readability by increasing the number of "personal words." For easy and interesting reading, a story design is usually best--either sustained narrative or anecdotes, illustrative examples, and practical applications, sandwiched between straight description. For instructional pieces, the best design is the direct "you" approach, or cookbook style.

In other words, you can increase the number of "personal words" by using the first and second persons for yourself and your reader and by explaining your ideas through the experiences of people.

Use Direct Quotes at Key Points. Move your narrative along by using direct quotes at key points along the way.  After increasing the number of "personal words," increase the number of "personal sentences." In today's professional writing the proportion of dialogue to narrative is increasing steadily. Successful writing today uses a conversational approach

Break up Sentences and Paragraphs. Next, shorten the length of your average sentence. To do this, look for the joints in complex sentences and break them, changing dependent clauses to independent clauses. Also, there’s a natural relationship between the length of sentences and the length of paragraphs. After you’ve shortened your sentences, break up your paragraphs to fit the changed rhythm. And avoid using semi-colons. Put a period where a semi-colon should be. But make sure the new sentence following it relates directly to the previous one.

Use Simpler Words. While you should generally choose a simpler word over a more complex one, some of the long, complex words may be technical terms that shouldn't be changed. As for the rest, remember that complexity rather than length makes for reading difficulty. Many complex words are abstract nouns. Change these nouns into verbs, particularly simple verbs with adverbs. For example, instead of using the word “condescension,” use “look down on.”  And no, using simpler words won’t make you seem less intelligent. That’s a myth fostered by academics who like to show off how smart they are. As a writer, no one cares how intelligent you are, only that you communicate your thoughts well.

Help Your Reader Read. You’ll raise the level of readability indirectly if you try to help your readers read. Point out to them what’s significant. Using bold type, tell them to remember what they should remember, use headings to prepare them for what they’re going to read, and summarize for them what they’ve read.

Learn to Cut. The most common problem with beginning writers—and some advanced ones, too—is wordiness. Tightening up your writing by cutting non-essentials will make essentials stand out better and save the reader time.  If your piece of writing is too long, some readers may skip it altogether.

Rearrange for Emphasis. Readers remember best what they read last. Rearrange your writing with that in mind. Repeat important concepts towards the end so that readers will remember them.

Punctuate for Readability. Avoid semicolons and colons which tend to lengthen sentences. Parentheses make writing appear more formal and take away from its conversational casualness. Also, get in the habit of reading what you’ve written aloud to “hear” where punctuation should go.

Following these simple steps will help to drastically improve your writing with an almost immediate effect.

It’s All in the Edit

Next to writing the actual words, your most important job as a writer is to edit your work. Good editing makes all the difference between writing and really good writing. However, many writers find it tedious—they like only the buzz they get from the actual process of writing. Also, just as many writers don’t really know what editing is all about. They think they know based on corrections made by English teachers when they were in school, but this is far from the editing needed to make a writer’s work look professional.

First and foremost, before doing any editing, step away from your work. Let it sit idle for at least a day or several. The longer you refrain from looking at it, the better. Your mind will forget about it eventually, so when you do look at it again, you’ll see it in a new light.

Editing is much more than just correcting mechanical errors—spelling, punctuation, verb tense, pronoun agreement, and general sentence structure. Editing deals with the content of your piece. Does it make sense? Is the flow logical? Are your words familiar enough for all readers? (See my previous blog on using $20 words).

Whatever you’ve written, you’ve done so to express yourself on a particular topic. Have you done that? Will that be clear to your reader? Clarity is the number one problem with most poorly edited writing. Remember, your reader can’t phone you or send you an E-mail to ask what something means.

Generally, editing consists of four jobs:  deleting, rearranging, rewriting, and correcting.

First read through your work and delete any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that doesn’t belong. If you can eliminate the word and there's no loss of meaning, then eliminate it.

If you haven’t looked at your work for a while, you may notice that some parts need to be rearranged for better continuity. Readers won’t make the leap, so don’t expect them to figure out what you mean. Make your writing logical. If you’re not telling your story chronologically, make sure you won’t lose your reader in the process.

After you delete parts or whole sections and rearrange others, you’ll most likely have holes to fill, so you’ll have to rewrite some parts to make sure they read well and make sense. In this editing phase, you may also want to check for smooth paragraph transitions. These help your writing to flow effortlessly from paragraph to paragraph.

Lastly, and only then, correct any errors in spelling, punctuation, verb tenses, and pronoun agreement.

Once you’ve edited your article, short story, or book, it may be time to let someone else have a crack at it, especially if it’s a book. Find someone who is a serious reader to go over it in detail. Better yet, hire a professional book editor. With the ease of self-publishing for Kindle or Nook, too many writers today are trying to sell what amounts to writing trash. Make sure whatever you sell is the best it can be before you put it on the market.

Don’t Forget the Basics

With the advent of computers, the Internet, E-mail, and especially texting, many students have glossed over basic writing skills in favor of abbreviated forms of communication. While most will sadly be able to get by communicating in writing, those interested in becoming writers have to heed to the call.

If you have any dreams of becoming a published writer, you need to pay close attention to your writing skills and, for some, English usage. The writing business has standards of quality—strict ones—that all writers follow, from best-selling book authors all the way down to beginning freelancers writing for their local newspaper.

While most people think that writing skills mean punctuation and capitalization—what writers call mechanics—the truth is they also include things like phrasing and idioms, and at the top of the list, sentence structure and paragraphing. Way down on the list is vocabulary. It doesn’t take big words to make your readers understand what you’re trying to say.

So if you’re writing skills aren’t up to par, it doesn’t matter how great your ideas are because you won’t be able to express them properly.

If you find your writing skills below par or perhaps lacking altogether, enroll in a basic composition class or a basic writing class at a local school night or community college. The former are less expensive and usually run for six to eight weeks. That’s plenty of time to get your skills in shape, especially if you have assignments to write each week.

Of course, you can improve your writing skills on your own, but you won’t get any feedback and that’s very important—not only from the instructor but from other students. If you have any plans to publish anything, get started now improving a writer’s second greatest asset—your writing skills. The first is your ideas.