5 Easy Ways to Enhance the Readability of Your Writing Author: Krista Stryker

You know you're a good writer.

You got A+'s on all of your papers in high school and college. You passed your English classes with flying colors. You rocked the school paper as editor.

In short, you've been told you were an all star writer your entire life.

So now that you're in the real world, why isn't anyone reading your precious words?

You're not writing for your English teacher anymore

Your English teacher might have praised you for your use of colorful adjectives.

She might have loved your long, verbose sentences. Your two page-long paragraphs.

But here's a wake up call: you're not in English class anymore.

Writing for the real world is different. People don't go to your blog/sales page/website to read.

They go to get the information.

That means that they want your content to be as easily to ingest as possible. If they could inject it Matrix-style into their brain, they would.

But since that's not an option (yet), you have to make it as easy as possible for them to read. Or, you'll lose them for good.

So how do you unlearn all of the writing skills you learned in the first few decades of your life?

Start by following these five techniques:

1. Make your sentences short

There's something about long, windy sentences that induce an, "oh-my-god-this-looks-hard-I-can't-read-this-I-don't-have-time," sort of reaction in the average person's brain.

It's easy to avoid this: just make your sentences short. Especially the first one.

Successful copywriters figured this out ages ago. Short sentences dramatically increase response.

There's just something about a short, easy to read sentence that draws the reader in and urges her to go on reading.

And that's your goal, right?

2. Use shorter paragraphs

Forget everything you learned about writing paragraphs in English class. If you're a copywriter or any sort of online writer, you need to break up your paragraphs.

Ideally, this means keeping them to one to three sentences, max. It may feel foreign the first time you try it, but once you start doing it, you'll learn to love it. I promise.

Especially when more people start reading (and finishing!) your content.

3. Use subheads

Want to ensure that the laziest person in the world still gets the gist of your article?

Then use subheads.

Subheads make your writing scannable. They make it so that even if the reader refuses to read the entire article, she'll still get an overall notion of what it's about.

Imagine your subheads like miniature headlines. They should draw the reader in and give her a summary of what's ahead. They should always be compelling and informative, and keep your reader moving along through your content.

For best results, try to use subheads every 3-5 paragraphs when writing online.

4. Use bulleted lists

People love lists. Why? Because they're:

• Easy to read
• Easy to scan
• They give a lot of information quickly

They also provide a visual break for your reader, since they appear different from the rest of your text.

Basically, lists make your article more appealing. Use them whenever possible.

5. Test it

What's the best way to know the true readability of your content? Test it.

There are lots of different ways to do this, but one of the oldest and most common ways is the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score. This test uses a mathematical formula to calculate the average number of syllables per word and the average number of words per sentence for a 100-word block of text.

Results for the Flesch-Kinkaid Reading Ease score are measured on a scale of 1-100--1 being very complicated and 100 very easy to read. Most copywriters and online writers should try for the 60-70 range.

And if you want a second simple way to test readability, give the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score a try. Based on grade levels from 0-12 (0 being the lowest and 12 being the maximum), this test measures syllables and sentence length.

Again, since you're not writing for your English teacher, you should generally aim for a 7th-8th grade level--that captures more than 80 % of U.S. adults.

So what are you waiting for?

Go make your content more readable today. The readers of the world are waiting.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/copywriting-articles/5-easy-ways-to-enhance-the-readability-of-your-writing-5996803.html

About the Author

Krista Stryker is a freelance copywriter helping awesome health, fitness & wellness companies get their message out to the world. Find her at kristastryker.com where she divulges her favorite copywriting tips or follow her on Twitter @kristastryker.