How does your news measure up?
The BBC covers the most serious news known to man — West Bank stabbings, friendly fire air strikes, Justin Bieber’s bad behavior — and does so in an average of 4.7-character words.… Read the full article
Readability
Scannable content makes message 34% more memorable
Also increases understanding, satisfaction
The more words on a web page, the longer visitors will stay.
But is that really the best metric to measure? What if you could engage users on a page for half the time, yet have them remember one-third more of the content?… Read the full article
World technology literacy skills: bad and getting worse
16% of adults are technologically illiterate
Just 8% of adults around the world can manage conflicting requests to reserve a meeting room using a reservation system, then email people to let them know whether they got the room they requested.… Read the full article
Why high readability helps everyone
(Yes, even your audience!)
I recently attended a conference where the Nielsen Norman Group unveiled its latest eyetracking research. After more than 20 years in the lab, watching people read and respond to text, they reported this finding:
“This is too easy to read.”
… Read the full articleStop wasting web visitors’ time with puffery
Web visitors ‘get visibly angry’ at verbose sites
Here’s an interesting dichotomy: Killing time is the killer app for mobile devices. But mobile users are in a hurry and “get visibly angry” at verbose sites that waste their time.… Read the full article
What’s the ideal press release length?
Write a one-minute news release
Tick tock.
In the time it takes you to wash your hands, buckle your seat belt or start the dishwasher, your favorite journalist can finish reading your news release.… Read the full article
Write like the Times: Keep words short
The newspaper of record covers rocket science & brain surgery in simple terms
When I recommend to my clients that they limit their word length to 5 characters per word, they roll their eyes and chortle.… Read the full article
What is the word length effect?
Long words are stuffy and hard to read
Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry spent eight years teaching businesspeople how to write better. As he told Time magazine:
Take a tip from Barry: Avoid multisyllabic exhibitions of verbosity.… Read the full article
What is the literacy rate in the U.S 1993?
27% of Americans can’t write simple messages or letters
What reading grade level should you hit on the Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog or other readability indexes?… Read the full article
What’s the United States literacy rate in 2003?
33% of U.S. adults can’t calculate the cost of office supplies
Just 12% of Americans read well enough to review search results from a library website to identify a book suggesting that claims made both for and against genetically modified foods are unreliable.… Read the full article