Some
novice writers think that the more abstruse their writing is (and filled with
technical jargon), the more knowledgeable they will appear.
If
you’ve read my other posts on the topic, you know that I think the opposite is
true. The mark of a skilled author is
the ability to write simple, concise narratives that provide clear, unambiguous
interpretations of their work. This
characteristic is true of both the technical writer (e.g., of scientific
papers) and the writer of non-technical articles. However, if your target audience is the
non-specialist, you need to strive for even clearer, jargon-free writing.
In
previous posts, I’ve talked at length about various writing topics (you can do
a search on “writing” to find them on this blog). In this post, I’d like to mention a useful
tool that can be used to assess and improve the readability of your writing,
whether for technical or popular outlets.
The
tool I’m talking about is the “readability statistics” found in some
word-processing programs, including Word.
This function is found within the Grammar and Spell-Checking
option. The readability statistics
function is not turned on by default, but you can activate it by selecting
Options under the Tools menu (or Preferences for the Mac). You then select the Grammar and Spelling tab
and check the box “show readability statistics”. Then all you do is select Spelling and
Grammar under the Tools menu in Word, and you will automatically get
readability statistics for any text you select.
The
two readability indices are the Flesch Reading Ease Score and the
Flesch-Kincaid Score. The Flesch Reading
Ease Score rates text on a 100 point scale; the higher the score, the easier it
is to understand the document; and for most non-technical documents, you want
to aim for a score around 60 or 70. The
Flesch-Kincaid Score rates text on a US school grade level. For example, a score of 8 means that an
eighth grader can understand the document.
Note that earlier Microsoft Word versions artificially capped this at
grade 12; the original formula extended the scoring to grade 17. Later PC versions go above 12, but the Mac
version has not been fixed to my knowledge.
Let’s
give it a try with an example from the government website, Plain
Language (for some hilarious reading, check this site out). This is the “before” version of a government
regulation:
“Under 25 CFR §1.4(b), the Secretary of
the Interior may in specific cases or in specific geographic areas, adopt or
make applicable to off-reservation Indian lands all or any part of such laws,
ordinances, codes, resolutions, rules or other regulations of the State and
political subdivisions in which the land is located as the Secretary shall
determine to be in the best interest of the Indian owner or owners in achieving
the highest and best use of such property.”
If
we examine the readability statistics (left), we are not surprised to find that
it gets a zero score for Flesch Reading Ease and a 12 for the
Flesch-Kincaid score.
Here
is how it was improved:
“Section 1.4(b) of 25 CFR allows us to
make State or local laws or regulations apply to your off-reservation lands. We
will do this only if we find that it will help you to achieve the highest and
best use of your lands.”
I
think this version is more readable than the original, and the readability
statistics confirm this. The Flesch
Reading Ease Score has been increased to 67.2 and a 9th grader
should be able to understand it.
Let’s
try a science example. Here is a
sentence from Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa” (which I’ve analyzed in
a previous post):
"For it must be realised by
any student of civilisation that we pay heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly
changing civilisation; we pay in high proportions of crime and delinquency, we
pay in the conflicts of youth, we pay in an ever-increasing number of neuroses,
we pay in the lack of a coherent tradition without which the development of art
is sadly handicapped."
Its
Flesch Reading Ease Score is 29.3, and someone would need a 12th
grade education (or higher) to understand it.
Part of the reason it gets a low score is that the sentence is long and
convoluted. If we change it a bit, we
can raise the score:
“Any student should realize that our
complex and changing civilization costs us in terms of greater crime and more
neuroses. This situation leads to a lack
of coherent traditions, which hampers the development of art”.
This
revision raises the Flesch Reading Ease Score to 51.2 and a 10th
grader should understand it.
Now, let me
hasten to add that I’m just using this as an example of how these readability
indices work. I’m not suggesting that
Mead’s sentence was poorly written and needed revision. In fact, in my previous post, I used this
example to illustrate the additive style of sentence construction….one that
usually adds to the emotion or “atmosphere” of a piece.
The
point here is that you can use such readability indices to see how much mental
effort a reader needs to exert to understand a statement you’ve written. There are certainly limitations to the use of
such indices, and there are critics (see this paper for a more detailed description of
these indices and the main criticisms).
You definitely don’t want to write solely to meet these or other
readability statistics, which have their limitations; you should always write
to your audience and use common-sense in constructing your narratives. However, I’ve found such statistics to be
useful especially in taking a description and seeing if it would be
understandable by a non-specialist.
And there
are other statistics given along with the two scores discussed above.
Another
useful bit of information that comes with the readability statistics is the
number of passive sentences (see screenshots above). Technical writing
tends to use this type of construction, but should strive to use an active
construction whenever feasible. Word’s
readability statistics includes an estimate of the proportion of passive
sentences in a passage.
Many
people are confused, however, about what is meant by active versus passive
construction (see this post for more discussion). People often think that an active
construction involves the use of first-person pronouns: “We reviewed the data
in multiple studies.” As opposed to : “The data in multiple studies were
reviewed.” Yes, these are examples of
active versus passive constructions, respectively, but not because of the
personal pronoun. The distinction is
whether or not the action of the subject is expressed in the verb.
To illustrate, here’s another example of a passive
construction: “Increased salinity was found to cause a shift in species
composition.” Here, the subject of the sentence receives the action expressed
in the verb.
Here is the active construction of that sentence:
“Increased salinity caused a shift in species composition. “ In this
version, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the
verb. No first-person pronouns are
involved.
Unfortunately, the calculation of passive sentences in
Word sometimes underestimates the percentage (for a longer discussion, see the
reference above). However, it’s still
useful, especially if it encourages the writer to be aware of passive versus active
sentence construction. Overall, the active construction tends to be shorter and easier to understand. It also leads to more dynamic writing that is
more enjoyable to read. Technical
writing typically must fit into a word limit set by a journal. By reducing the proportion of passive
sentences, you can often reduce the word count of your document and at the same
time increase its readability. The total
words in a passage, as well as number of words per sentence, are also given in
the readability statistics. These
statistics can be very helpful when you need to reduce the length of your
narrative.
If you’ve never tried the readability statistics
offered in Word or other programs, give it a try, especially if you frequently
get the criticism that your writing is difficult to understand.
2 comments:
Nice post! The second-last paragraph, though, I think you meant that ACTIVE sentences tend to be more concise and interesting?
Thanks for catching that...I changed the sentence around and neglected to replace "passive" with "active".
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