Newsletter Readability
The problem:
Is the writing in your newsletter consistent? Is each issue as readable as the original standard you set for it?
I don’t take those questions lightly, since I write for many different audiences in my newsletter publishing business. One minute, a professional audience; the next, a blue collar audience.
If I slip into a blue-collar style for a professional audience, they get impatient.
On the other hand, if I drift into a professional style for the blue-collar audience, my writing won’t be understood.
Consistency should concern all writers and publishers, and they should work to ensure that writing in their newsletter remains consistent over time.
Solutions:
My solutions? First, grammar checking software, much maligned by anyone who knows anything about grammar. However, if you put aside the shortcomings of the actual grammar checking and make use of the statistical reporting capabilities, you’ll find you have a very helpful tool.
Second, I use a simple form of quality assurance, a worksheet that tracks key measures from issue to issue. It involves only a few measures, but they do help me stay aware of the readability.
On the worksheet:
Number of words
This measure, taken after completion of the first draft, provides some idea of the volume relationship between words and graphics. Usually, a high proportion of text will be less attractive, and consequently less readable.
Number of Charts
This one doesn’t bear directly on readability, but went in because my client wanted to increase employees’ awareness and use of charts. This measure in the worksheet helped assure that we put at least one into each issue.
Words/sentence
The fewer words, the more understandable the sentence. On the other hand, consistently short sentences lead to choppy sentences and articles, so we want a happy medium of some kind. I averaged something between 18 and 20 words a sentence. Articles written for professionals generally would use more words per sentence.
Characters/word
Again, an obvious measurement. Keeping the average number of characters per word down keeps the readability up.
Passive sentences
A passive sentence contains a ‘to be’ verb, like ‘is’ or ‘are.’ An active verb, on the other hand, describes an action of some kind. Generally, active verbs mean higher readability, so I try to minimize passive verbs. Of course, there can be a price to pay for eliminating them entirely, which is to make sentences sound stilted. For most clients, I aim for no more than 10% passive verbs.
Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch/Kincaid Grade Level
These two measures can be taken together, as each provides a quantitative measure of prose readability. Flesch Reading Ease is a number between 1 and 100, with low numbers being more difficult and higher numbers easier to read.
Those numbers often seem too abstract, though, so we turn to the Flesch/ Kincaid Grade Level, which expresses the same concept in more familiar terms.
For most readers I keep the Reading Ease number above 50, and try to keep the Grade Level at or below 10. This suggests the writing should be easily understood by a person with a Grade 10 education.
Conclusions:
It really doesn’t matter what grammar checking software you use, nor the individual measures, nor the levels of the measures. Instead, think in terms of picking a few helpful measures and routinely recording them. By doing this you should have greater success at keeping the readability of your newsletter consistent from issue to issue.
