This document discusses elements that impact the readability and clarity of written language. It notes that readability refers to how easy text is to read and understand. Elements that can negatively impact readability include small text, long lines with little white space, long paragraphs without breaks, cluttered text, and complex linguistic elements like long sentences, unfamiliar terms, and compound words. Elements that can improve readability include short sentences, familiar terms, syntactic simplicity, illustrations, redundancy, coherence, consistency, and breaking text into concise paragraphs with headings. The document also discusses how users typically skim web pages in an F-shaped pattern rather than reading thoroughly, and the importance of maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio to keep only relevant

1. Clear Language
and Readability
Zurich Content Strategy Meetup
September 24 2013

2. What makes language clear?
What makes texts readable?

3. The obvious basics

4. Readability
The quality of written language that
makes it easy to read and
understand.

5. Representational elements that
make reading difficult
• Small type, long lines, insufficient
contrast.
• Long paragraphs with no
segmentation
• Clutter.

6. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer
adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod
tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat
volutpat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer
adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod
tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat
volutpat.

7. Linguistic elements that
help reading:
• short words, short sentences.
• familiar terms over technical terms
• Syntactic simplicity:
• no dependent clauses (Nebensätze)
• Split up compound words:
Parkettbodenschleifmaschinenenverleihfirma
• Don‘t use machine-readable IDs for
idetification of elements. (IBAN, Error Codes)

8. High level elements that
help.
• coherence
• consistency
• Illustrations and diagrams
• redundancy

9. Familiarity:
Fitting the target audience
• The language used must reflect the target
audience
• You can only make it harder for everybody
• Know for who you have to make it really
easy.
• Don‘t buy into the
„Kompetenzvermutung“ nonsense.
It‘s a trap.

10. Measuring Readability:
Fry readability graph
Averagesentences/100words
Average amount of syllables / 100 words

11. Measuring Readability:
Flesch-Reading-Ease
FREen = 206.835 - ( 1.015 · ASL) - (85.6 · ASW)
FREde = 180 - ASL - (58.5 · ASW)
ASL =
Average Sentence Length:
Total words / total sentences
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbarkeitsindex
ASW =
Average number of Syllables per Word
Total syllables / total words

12. What users want
• Gain overview
• Scan the content
• Make decision „Is this for me?“

13. Users don‘t read, they
skim
• Users won't read your text
thoroughly in a word-by-word
manner
• The first two paragraphs must
state the most important
information.

14. People scan web pages in
an F-shaped pattern

15. Make it scannable
• Break down texts into concise
paragraphs
• Offer headings to paragraphs

16. Signal vs Noise ratio
The ratio of relevant to irrelevant
information should be as high as
possible.
PENDENTPENDENTPENDENT
Empfänger Fällig Betrag
Krankenkassse Helsana 25.09.2013 235.65
UPC Cablecom 30.09.2013 76.50
GE Money Bank 08.10.2013 56.80
PendentPendent
Krankenkassse Helsana
25.09.2013
235.65
UPC Cablecom
30.09.2013
76.50
GE Money Bank
08.10.2013
56.80

17. Clarity
Plain language
Not ambiguous
simple
to the task
no fillers

18. This is a Swiss Ballot Paper for a referendum.
The question asked has always this simple form.

19. This is from the brochure accompanying
the referendum.

20. Short sentences.
Scannable
Subheads

21. A far less readable ballot paper for a
local referendum on a public credit.

22. This is an Italian ballot paper on a change of legislation regarding electoral lists.
The question contains every passage of the legislation that is being changed.

23. Workflow

24. Writing is rewriting.
Revision is where the
magic happens.

25. Establish a workflow
• Establish the workflow before the project
starts
• Discuss the Brand:
voice / identity / existing material
What is the message?
• Who is in charge, who is not?
• How many revisions are there going to be?
• Who has the last word and why.

26. Links
• True writing is rewriting
http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue9/
true.htm
• Wikipedia on Readability measurements:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbarkeitsindex
• Kate Kiefer: Voice and Tone
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/09/17/
kate-kiefer-lee-voice-and-tone-live/