The June Writing Voice exercise

Did you know that the average American reads at a seventh or eight-grade level? [Source.] Depending on what you’re writing and how many people you hope to reach, you might pitch your writing voice to that level.

Remember that the reader makes the final decision about your writing voice. Perhaps you intend to sound sophisticated and learned. If readers cannot understand what you write, they won’t be muttering about your brilliance as they slog through the writing.

Readers feel more warmly toward writers who are easy to understand. So, check your readability score.

Who’s keeping score?

Once we leave grade school behind, we rarely choose books based on their posted reading level. Most of us read at a wide range of levels, from corporate reports or dense science tomes to the escapist “beach read.”

Where does your writing fall, on a scale from scientific paper to beach read? (Of course, even within those genres readability levels vary, but you get the idea.)

Lucky for us, we can check the readability level of our work using widely available assessments.

Most offer scores based on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease assessment, which generates a score from 1 to 100 — higher is easier to read. The companion Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score maps to approximate grade levels 1-18 (first grade through graduate school). In this case, a higher number indicates that the text is harder to read. (Yes, the scales tip in opposite directions. Sigh.)

Guess, then assess

Where do you think your work lands in a grade level score? 8th grade? 10th? 12th?

Make a guess, then run it through a readability assessment. Here are a few places to find one:

In Microsoft Word, look in the Spelling and Grammar editorIn tools like Grammarly and ProWriting Aid, look for ReadabilityIf you don’t use those, search online for Flesch Kincaid calculator and copy something you’ve written into it.

How close was your guess? Are you surprised?

Optional: Play with your score

Readability (as calculated by those scales) arises from two fundamental decisions you make in writing: word choices and sentence construction.

The Flesch-Kincaid scales determine reading level by two factors only:

The average number of syllables in a wordThe average number of words in a sentence

That’s all. Not richness of thought, depth of vocabulary, or sophistication of subject matter. Just how long the words and sentences are, on average.

To make your text more readable: use shorter sentences and shorter words.

Experiment with this on your own. Make a few changes then run it through the calculator again. How hard is it to affect the level, either up or down? What feels “right” to your voice?

Just for fun, choose a few passages from authors you admire run see where they land. You might be surprised.

“Wait, my readers operate at a higher level!”

Perhaps you worry people will think less of you if you don’t show up with your long words. You might fear talking down to them.

Let’s dig into that. Readability does not mean “dumbing down” your work in any way. (I dislike that phrase for so many reasons.) Writing concisely requires more careful thought, not less. You can choose words that pack a punch in fewer syllables. We talked about the effects of sentence length in an earlier post in this series.

Even educated readers appreciate less-challenging prose. Perhaps they’re pick up your work at the end of a long day. How much of their mental energy are they willing to devote to your words? Won’t they feel more warmly about your voice if they don’t have to work so darned hard?

More to explore

Learn more about the Flesch-Kincaid scales.

Find an online readability test here.

This topic maps to the sixth section of The Writer’s Voice. Find more voice-related exercises there — as a print book from Amazon, Bookshop, or as a PDF directly from me.

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