Readability
Rate the age and class level toward which the writing seems to be aimed. Is this the way you would talk to a 50-year-old or a 15-year-old? Would you address a superior this way or only a subordinate? Does it show you regard this person as a competent colleague or as a bumbler or novice? Are you writing as though the reader has only a grade school education or four years of college?

Decide on the grade level for the writing. Overly simple writing may put off your reader and fail to convey the necessary information, while overly complex information can confuse the reader. Standard business correspondence is normally written at a tenth-grade level. That does not mean the writer is talking down to readers who have college degrees. It only means that anyone who can read at the tenth-grade level could understand text written at the tenth-grade level, including Ph.D.s. It is a safe level because it catches all readers who read at a tenth-grade level or above.

The Wall Street Journal is written at an eleventh-grade level. Time and Newsweek are written at eighth- to tenth-grade levels. Sports Illustrated and People magazine are written at sixth- to eighth-grade levels.

Evaluate the difficulty or grade-level of the writing by looking at the vocabulary and sentence length. If the vocabulary is simple and sentence length is generally shorter, then the writing is probably at a lower grade level. It will communicate to a wider range of readers. If the vocabulary is more difficult, with many syllables, and the writing includes some long, complex sentences, then it is probably written at a higher grade level: you may lose average readers. When in doubt, keep your writing at the simple level.

In this writing that is so clear it cannot be misunderstood, you should write at the tenth-grade level or lower for general audiences. Choose the grade level for more sophisticated or technical readers based on your understanding of their experience and knowledge.

You could apply one of the readability formulas to find out what the approximate grade level is for any writing, including your own. Learning about readability formulas is optional in this course.

Readability formulas

Writers talk about the complexity or "difficulty" of their writing in terms of grade level. A report written at the tenth-grade level could probably be understood by a person reading at the tenth-grade level. A person reading at an eighth-grade level might have some problems, but a person reading at the third- or fourth-grade levels definitely would have difficulty.

You can measure the approximate grade level of your own or others' writing by applying one of the readability formulas. The formulas ask you for the number of syllables in the words, number of words in sentences, and difficulty levels of the words. Different readability formulas may come up with very different results, indicating that they are not extremely accurate.

Microsoft Word includes the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index. Use it each time you complete a document. Follow this procedure to turn it on:

For Word 2018

  1. Click on "Tools" on the Microsoft Word pulldown menu.
  2. Click on "Options."
  3. Click on the "Spelling & Grammar" tab. You will see a window with this in it:

 
  1. Click on "Check grammar with spelling."
  2. Click on "Show readability statistics."
  3. Click on "OK" to accept the changes.

When you are ready to check the readability of your document, open your document in Microsoft Word and select "Tools" from the menu at the top of the screen. A pulldown menu will appear. Select the "Spelling & Grammar" option. The system will check your document and then provide a summary of the words and sentences, including the Flesch-Kincaid Index rating.

For Word 2018 and 2018

  1. Click on "File" on the Microsoft Word menu that goes across the top of the window.
  2. Click on "Options."
  3. Click on the "Spelling & Grammar" tab. You will see a window with this in it:

 
  1. Click on "Check grammar with spelling."
  2. Click on "Show readability statistics."
  3. Click on "OK" to accept the changes.

When you are ready to check the readability of your document, open your document in Microsoft Word and select "Review" from the menu at the top of the screen. Click on the "Spelling & Grammar" option. The system will check your document and then provide a summary of the words and sentences, including the Flesch-Kincaid Index rating.

It will show two scores: The Flesch Reading Ease score and The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score.

Flesch Reading Ease score

This score rates text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. For most standard documents, a score of 60 to 70 is readable by most people. A lower score is more difficult to read.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score This score provides an approximate school level for a reader to be able to understand the text easily. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader might be able to understand the document easily. Most business documents should be aimed at 7.0 to 10.0. Technical documents written for a technical audience will have a higher grade level.