Like most things these days, readability can be given a numeric score. The one we tend to use is the Flesch reading ease score. (To see how  Microsoft word actually works this out for you, click here)

There are other indicators but broadly, they judge a document on 2 things.

1. The length of sentances (number of words) and
2. The number syllables in each word

(The exact formulas are available on sites like wikipedia but to be honest, they do look very scary..)

Armed with these 2 simple facts and very little else, we can make very powerful inroads into improving our readability scores.

Let’s look at two sample passages of text/strong

“the purpose of this document is to ensure that all staff are aware of the required safety procedures” (18 words)

includes a lot of what we called “clearing the throat” text. It can be shortened to

“this document shows staff the safety procedures” (7 words)

Now, we want to get our flesch reading ease score as high as possible.

Why?

Because we want our document to be read and most people stop reading at the age of about 15 or 16 (when they leave school).

Here is the Flesch reading ease table.

90-100 : Very Easy
80-89 : Easy
70-79 : Fairly Easy
60-69 : Standard
50-59 : Fairly Difficult
30-49 : Difficult
0-29 : Very Confusing

How easy is this to do?

Very, if you know where to look. Look for “clearing the throat” words & phrases.

The most obvious ones are “In order to”, “the purpose of” etc.

Also, read the classified ads in the Sunday Papers – they have to be absolutely miserly with words. “Lose weight – free book shows you how” is just 7 words (and just 7 syllables also) but gets the message over perfectly…

Ok – Now off you go to look over your own documents…

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