Magnificent Marcia and the Amazing Readability Calculator
July 8th, 2006 by Lani VoivodOh, goody goody goody! I just got permission from one of the greatest practicing marketers around, Ms. Marcia Yudkin (http://www.yudkin.com/), to share one of her most recent quick tips from her weekly “Marketing Minute” email.
A word about Marcia from a Content Lover:
She’s AMAZING. She’s been consistent, prolific, laser-sharp, and right on target every single week since I first discovered her way back in 2002, when I was working from my cubicle at Mattel with the Web group, writing for Barbie.com. If you need information on marketing, copywriting, publicity, website makeovers, turning content to cash, media schmoozing, or any other trick of the trade for the small biz pro, Marcia’s your gal. 
The woman started her career from the top rung with an article printed in the New York Times, and she’s been building her own extension ladders ever since. With THREE Ivy League degrees (including a Ph.D.!), 11 books, thousands of articles, and a thriving creative marketing and professional speaking business under her belt (not to mention DOZENS of targeted info-products and dynamite interviews with select industry pros across all sorts of categories!), Marcia is a resource that’s worth knowing about.
ESPECIALLY since, as savvy as she is, she’s just as supportive and prolific when it comes to writers and writing in general. In fact, she put together a separate site - Published! How to Reach Writing Success - geared for these burning passions of hers.Oh — and as the co-owner of a company named Epiphanies, Inc., I would be absolutely remiss if I didn’t also mention my FAVORITE resource of hers. It’s a robust and exciting eBook I own and love:
Inspired! How to Be More Original, Insightful and Productive in Your Work. Strategies for heightened creativity, based on years of interviewing, testing and research. Learn how to tune into your intuition, set up your environment to facilitate insights, change your routines for improved productivity, put more pizzazz into your communication, engineer stress out of your life, and much more. PDF file. $39.95. (You can find it on this page.)
I LOVE that she brought together all this amazing stuff — stories, examples, how-tos, etc.! — to honor and maximize the creative process. Rock on, Marcia!
Which brings us to the quickie article that *inspired* this blog entry…
READABILITY TIPS
Can your customers easily understand how (and why) to do business with you?
The average American adult has an 8th to 9th grade reading level, but when I randomly tested ten web sites of Marketing Minute subscribers, they demanded an average reading ability more than two grades higher.
Microsoft Word has a built-in readability checker, or use
this readability calculator:
Readability doesn’t necessarily involve any “dumbing down.” While I have in mind a reader of higher than average intelligence, the reading level of my own articles is 8th to 9th grade. Greater readability requires:* Shorter sentences, with simpler sentence structure* Fewer multisyllabic words* Less jargon* Shorter paragraphs* Subheads and bullet points, when appropriate
* Easy-to-find summaries
In the 1930s and 1940s, newspaper circulation plunged. Then readability pioneers Rudolph Flesch and Robert Gunning worked with the Associated Press and United Press to make news writing more readable. When the average reading level of newspapers dropped from the 12th to the 9th grade, readership rose 45%. The same would happen today.
Get read. Get understood. Get results!
- Reprinted with permission from Marcia Yudkin’s free weekly Marketing Minute newsletter. Subscribe at www.yudkin.com/marksynd.htm
Thanks, Marcia!!! Keep up the INSPIRING and utterly READABLE work!
