Changing your writing for easier reading.
This is an education series on how you could use getfeliz to better your writing in everyday situations. Try it now at try.getfeliz.in. This is Part 1 covering the Ease-O-Read, the next parts would contain other tips and tricks.
We all write everyday. We write for different purposes, starting with writing emails, to blogs, to journals, to maybe some of us, content to market our products. But have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of the reader when they read your article?
Well it is hard to crack that, we at getfeliz, aim to do that, give you a glimpse into the mind of the reader, so that you could reach the reader in a much better way. You can try our beta solution at try.getfeliz.in
Today I would be discussing one of the angles of analysis given by getfeliz. We call it the Ease-O-Read. Consider this news article taken from a leading news publication (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/forever-young-on-roger-federers-longevity/article19297291.ece), a wonderful editorial on the longevity of Federer in Wimbledon, if one analyses this text on getfeliz, you would get different results. How do you interpret them. Let us take the first one, the “Ease-O-Read”. Below is the analysis of the article,
The age which can read this article with ease : 14 years
Total Characters : 2932
Total Sentences : 27
Total Words : 507
Average Sentence Length : 18.78
Average Word Length : 4.64
Average Reading Time : 3 minutes
Formality : 67.17 Higher the score, more formal is your text. (0 to 100)
Let us start with the reading age, it is 14 years, this is the score derived by the Flesch-Kincaid method. This method was established in the the mid 70’s and was used by the US defence. It became a standard on how memo’s and other information needs to be written, so that clear communication of the intent is passed down the lines.
This is rather important, score, as it’s ability to grade what age child/adult can read your piece of text. Is it too hard/too easy? The key being lower cognition loads
In today’s world, so many pieces of text passing us on our screens, it is essential that we write to reduce cognition & read load. It is not understanding that you aim by lowering the score, but just the ease of read.
The next bunch of scores leads to how diverse your content is, how long it is, and what is the average word length. Again shorter the better as shorter words leads to the eye skip, and hence the reader can skim the content, rather than read it intently, in the first pass.
Reducing cognition load again here is essential, as it helps keep the reader engaged and over a period of time they would read your email/content as they appreciate the short reads you can generate.
The last score id the formality score which is how formal/casual you sound. We all have done mistakes on this one. We intend to write to our bosses a casual mail, to get into a conversation, but end up being formal, and end up with a large enterprise customer very casual, totally missing the point probably.
Formality score is crucial, when you write, knowing whom you are writing to. This helps determine the relationship you have with your target reader, and what kind of the relationship you want to cultivate. Trying to be formal in a casual setting is a sure recipe for the reader dropping off, as they do not feel connected. The flip also is true.
With getfeliz in hand, you could completely target the way you want your reader to feel. Try it now.
getfeliz — Happy Writing.
PS. If you are wondering how this write-up fares, the average reading age for this article is 13 years, and the formality is of the casual style, with an avg reading time of 3 minutes.
The article taken from The Hindu newspaper in this blog is an excellent, and our analysis is no way to malign/appreciate the newspaper or the editor. It is just an analysis, which can be interpreted in different ways by different readers.
