Number 1: Simple, Not Stupid.
January 02, 2012
Most business language is at a Grade 12 level. News outlets present information anywhere from Grade 8 to 12, but predominantly at Grade 10. You can check the grade level of your own writing or communicating through online tools you can add to your spellcheck, or just use periodically. I’ll give you some links for that at the end of this post.
“Keep language simple” does not mean “dumb it down.” You can still use interesting words to help people understand your point or solicit an emotion. What you don’t want to do is use hoity toity words or your own industry/knowledge-related lingo that most people don’t understand.
The marketing industry has been a deadly den of catchphrases and acronyms designed to mystify.
“We need to develop your USP to create a brand platform and framework for your POV.” Translation: We should talk about what is unique about you and your organization (USP: unique selling point) so we can present it in an interesting way (brand platform) for your audience/s and then put together an outline (framework) on ways to get out your (POV: point of view) message.
People think lofty words make them sound more important, better, smarter, but all they do is alienate. You may sound smart, but you’ve failed to communicate. To get your message across, keep it easy on the ears.
There is data to support the need to subtract four grade levels when people are stressed or upset. That would mean we should be hovering around the grade six mark.
Check out your AGL (average grade level) through the Flesch-Kincaid calculator and other cool readability tools for programs that will give you an idea of how easy your information is to comprehend. Online-utility includes SMOG, the simple measure of gobbledygook. There are many such tools and some disagreement about which ones are best. Check them out and tell me what you think and I'd love to know what grade level you're writing at. This post is written at grade 9.5.
The divide between people who text or tweet and those who don’t can also fuel a major lack of connection. If digital natives want to influence digital immigrants or vice versa they must find a way to bridge the language of their worlds. In the workplace the language of social media has and continues to create a massive chasm. More on this in my next post, Digitally Drunk or Digitally Detached.
“Keep language simple” does not mean “dumb it down.” You can still use interesting words to help people understand your point or solicit an emotion. What you don’t want to do is use hoity toity words or your own industry/knowledge-related lingo that most people don’t understand.
The marketing industry has been a deadly den of catchphrases and acronyms designed to mystify.
“We need to develop your USP to create a brand platform and framework for your POV.” Translation: We should talk about what is unique about you and your organization (USP: unique selling point) so we can present it in an interesting way (brand platform) for your audience/s and then put together an outline (framework) on ways to get out your (POV: point of view) message.
People think lofty words make them sound more important, better, smarter, but all they do is alienate. You may sound smart, but you’ve failed to communicate. To get your message across, keep it easy on the ears.
There is data to support the need to subtract four grade levels when people are stressed or upset. That would mean we should be hovering around the grade six mark.
Check out your AGL (average grade level) through the Flesch-Kincaid calculator and other cool readability tools for programs that will give you an idea of how easy your information is to comprehend. Online-utility includes SMOG, the simple measure of gobbledygook. There are many such tools and some disagreement about which ones are best. Check them out and tell me what you think and I'd love to know what grade level you're writing at. This post is written at grade 9.5.
The divide between people who text or tweet and those who don’t can also fuel a major lack of connection. If digital natives want to influence digital immigrants or vice versa they must find a way to bridge the language of their worlds. In the workplace the language of social media has and continues to create a massive chasm. More on this in my next post, Digitally Drunk or Digitally Detached.
Posts
10 comments
This is a great blog. Part of my success as an accountant came from using plain language rather than reference codes.
ReplyDeleteGreat first blog post! I've now added it to my 'favourites' and just tested the opening paragraph from two of our news releases for readability. One did well, the other scored VERY low. This blog is already a practical tool for my corporate communications work!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great reminder about the value and importance of keeping it simple. When you see someone who is a great speaker, an excellent communicator or a inspiring story teller ... you don't think "wow, they know big words"... you engage with them, you feel involved in what they are telling you, you connect to the story. At some point, look at the words they use. They aren't the biggest, most 'intellectual' words available. They are words that evoke emotion, that help you to visualize the moment and they are easy to understand. We're putting this blog post up to remind everyone here at AHA to keep it simple. And compelling.
ReplyDeleteWill look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteLove your new site Della - such a great (and useful) idea. Look forward to future posts. BTW, my latest article was written at level grade 14 - whops!
ReplyDeleteMy Christmas family newsletter was written at a Grade 10 level with a score of 55. Not bad eh??
ReplyDeleteReadability tools are just that: tools. No more (and no less, because I'm not discounting them). They count words and syllables and then use a research-based formula to come up with what, on average, is a vague reference to an American (i.e., not Canadian) school-grading system.
ReplyDeleteAnd, 'on average' means that it doesn't properly measure, by definition, the abilities of most of those in the pool.
So, are we talking to children in grade school who have just spent a year in Grade 9 and working with text at that level daily for a year? Adults? Adults who have gone to college, university or technical school? Adults who are interested in the topic? Adults who work in the area of the topic (for example, marketing)? People who read English as a primary - or secondary - language? People who grew up in our culture, and thus get the idioms and references in the analyzed text, such as the phrase 'OCR'd copy' or 'Sir John A's Achilles heel was the CPR'?
Readability is not just counting characters by a program that has no idea what the words are about, nor who is reading them, and why. How many of us in the writing trade turn off our word processor's grammar checker? How many of us know full well that running the program's spellchecker is not the same thing as proofreading?
In 1949, a couple of well-known American readability experts, Edgar Dale and Jeanne Chall, came up with a comprehensive definition of the word: “The sum total (including all the interactions) of all those elements within a given piece of printed material that affect the success a group of readers have with it. The success is the extent to which they understand it, read it at an optimal speed, and find it interesting.”
In other words, it's not just the writing that must be straightforward but the content and its organization is just as important in defining readability.
And then, of course, there's interest. The accounting department's description of payroll deductions that increased as of January 1 may be as hard as steel to get through, but it's a safe bet that the company's entire employee base will be motivated to find somebody with a linguistic cutting torch.
By the way, Dale/Chall's definition of readability:
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 13.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 44.
(A high score in the Reading Ease test implies the text is easy to understand. Comics typically score around 90, legalese about 10.)
This entire comment (without the readability definition):
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 11.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 48.
You are so right Peter, just a tool. Love the discussion and comments. Exactly what I was hoping for. More welcome.
ReplyDeleteHear, hear, Della:
ReplyDeleteI am amazed that in a world where messages are written in 140 characters, there still exists a tendency to use inflated, pompous and "fat" language.
Fat words are those made-up words that attempt to add some grandiosity to simple words, usually because the perpetrator is attempting to inflate his or her own standing by doing so. ("Utilize" instead of "use", for example.)
I have just gone through a couple of case studies written by an engineer (they weren't about engineering at all) that were destined for a website, and was looking for a kind way to say that they reek of false pride and self-importance.
Now I have one.
Thanks for that
Tony
Tony, I love the term "fat words". Will be using that in my messaging sessions. Thanks!
ReplyDelete