How Plain is Your English?

"Instruments that record, analyse, summarize, organize, debate and explain information which are illustrative, non-illustrative, hardbound, paperback, jacketed, non-jacketed, with forward introduction, table of contents, index that are indented for the enlightenment, understanding, enrichment, enhancement and education of the human brain through sensory route of vision... sometimes touch.”

Puzzled??

It is Rancho’s reply to his professor, who was asking exact definitions in the movie 3 Idiots, to simply mean books.

This highlights our tendency to complicate our language, just because it sounds intellectual and professional. It is far from truth, especially for bloggers, writers and authors. Here, I will focus on blogging, but many aspects are similar to other related areas. So, do not hesitate to read and apply, even when you ain't a blogger.

Fetching readers for a blog post is a tiring and tricky process. Things become trickier when what is in our head needs to travel to the reader. Most of us are not famous writers, publishers, or literary legends. We do not have the ‘treasure of vocabulary’. We live by an average readability and understand simple words.

What is readability index?

It is important to consider the Plain English approach to attract an average reader. In other words, aim for a good readability index score for a blog post to be successful. It is a simple index based on previous research of good versus bad text from a sample population of readers.

According to Readability Formulas, for an adult reader in the United States,

• An average sentence length is 13–16 words.

• An average reading level is 7th–8th grade (7th–8th classes in India).

• The average percentage of 3-syllabled words in the text is 12–14%.

Why is a good readability index important?

Table 1 denotes few online resources that have shown ideal literary metadata for a blog post that is likely to be liked by an average reader.

Table 1. Various research results for optimum blog content metadata.

I used to write blog articles back in 2015 for VSkills Govt. Certification Ltd., New Delhi.

I compiled 35 articles in total on different topics including biology, psychology, current affairs, travel, economics, productivity and poetry. Without knowing Plain English, I kept on writing.

I checked the readability indices for each blog post. I also checked the number of comments and reviews for each post.

I categorized the comments as

• Superficial (2–3 worded) - reader has not indulged in the post but liked it

• Appreciative (1–2 lines) - reader appreciates after reading

• Insightful (paragraph) - reader has an insight or opinion

Moving from a superficial appreciation towards an insightful comment can provide some clue for the quality of each blog post. I hypothesized the quality to be directly correlated to the readers’ understanding and appraisal. I gave more value to a new reader, owing to his/her attraction to the post content.

I named the sum total of these values as Appraisal Index (AI).

Results of Appraisal Index (AI) Calculations

• Lower the readability index of a post, greater is the appraisal from readers.

• Posts with RI of the order of 3rd–8th grade student are appraised more.

• With experience, I subconsciously switched my style from complex technical English to a simpler plain English

• On an average, appraisal was high for psychology and current affairs, and low for technology, biology, economics and travel.

• Appraisal is directly linked to more unique words and less repetitive ones

• Sentence lengths of 15–20 words are the most appreciated

• Easier-to-read posts attract new readers

The ideal number of characters in a sentence are 75–100. The same number for syllables is 25–33. But neither account to any increase in the appraisal. There was no correlation between the post length and appraisal. A reasonable explanation for this can be varying readers' interests, reachability and publishing times.

It is also useful to observe common attributes of top-5 blog posts in terms of AI

1. Each content was easy to read or on a hot topic of the time.

2. In terms of readability indices, Flesch Reading Ease Score was high, while Gunning Fog, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Coleman-Liau Index, SMOG Index, Automated Readability Index (ARI) and Linsear Write Formula scores were low

3. Percentage of 2-syllabled words was 15-20%, and 3(+)-syllabled words 5-15%

4. Average number of characters for a sentence was low

Next time, you start blogging, do check your post's readability index. You can assess the readability of a blog article based on your expected audience and modify the content accordingly. Complexity does not indicate intellect, rather its opposite.

---

For current post,

Readability consensus

• Grade Level : 10

• Reading Level : fairly difficult to read.

• Reader's Age : 14-15 yrs. old (Ninth to Tenth graders)

---

I wish I could make it easier to read :)

References

1. (2019). Before and After. Plainlanguage.Gov.

2. My Byline Media. (2017). AUTOMATIC READABILITY CHECKER.