Quickly Improve your Writing

We all learned to write at school. Some of us were better at it than others. Some of us were like budget wine. We matured long after that last grammar lesson was but a distant memory. That’s how it was for me.

As a result I receive heaps of useful advice from folk during the course of any year. Useful snippets like why I should not slide an innocent apostrophe into the word “its”, for example. Or why voice recognition sucks because it gets the capital after a colon wrong. (That’s me – not the software.) Despite all this poor grammar, however, it seems that folk still read what I write.

This may be because nobody else knows grammar any better. This is quite possible given the current state of schooling worldwide. It may be because my paragraphs are drizzled in wisdom, although that’s merely a hopeful thought. It’s far more likely that it is because I have a secret writing weapon. I’d like to share that with you.

How does one measure how easy it is to read a specific piece of writing? More to the point, how does one take a piece of writing that is difficult to understand, and convert that into something that Sam the Siamese Poodle can read?

It’s all very well saying “Keep those paragraphs short”, but how short is short? Some clever literary mathematicians have spent a lot of time trying to work this all out. I for one am grateful that they did not spend their student days drinking as much as I did.

All of this was hidden research until fairly recently when the nice folks at Google decided that the rest of us needed help.

In principle, it is easy to calculate how readable any piece of writing is. You measure how long the words are, the sentences are, and the paragraphs are. Then you multiply all of that by the circumference of your neighbour’s beer-belly (if she will let you close enough to measure). Then you divide the answer by 43 and add the current price of a bottle of Boschendal Merlot (the 2003 vintage). Got that?

In practice, it is easier to simply use Google’s simple word processor. You can either use it to write the piece, or just copy some text from wherever and paste it in. Click on FILE-word count and Google will tell you how many words it contains. Google will also tell you what the Flesch Reading Ease count is. (The higher the better.) Google will also tell you what US School Grade is needed to easily read your prose. Right now I am aiming at somebody with a Grade 7 being happy to read this easily. (The first draft of this piece needed Grade 9.)

Why is this important? Well, it occurs to me that if you’re going to take the trouble to communicate by writing something, it is rather useful if they can understand what you want them to do. I read a bunch of business plans and proposals.

Despite being a writer I usually have to ask for some help. That’s usually because we remember the grammar and we forget the communication!

Take a few minutes out to test Google Docs. Take a piece of your corporate prose (from a sales quote, brochure, whatever) and drop it into the Google word processor. Like me, chances are that you will be embarrassed at the high level of university education needed to understand your proposal for a generator / new waterproofing / a salary increase. Like me, you will be able to quickly tighten it and see immediate results when your club buys the generator, your boss buys new waterproofing, and your wife gives you that raise.

Head for Google Docs ( http://docs.google.com ) . If you don’t yet have a Google account then create one quickly. (It’s simple and costs nothing.) And have some fun.

If you want to know if your prose fits the level of your readership, haed for Hemingwayapp (https://hemingwayapp.com). It's pretty sobering. Aim for around "8" readability for regular people.