Writing a research paper or an essay often requires more than just a great topic. Students and researchers who are frequently called upon to write essays and to do other kinds of academic writing need to ask themselves two important questions before they begin writing:
1 – Will the professor (or the target audience) be able to read this piece of writing?
2 – Will they want to?
While all authors, academic or non-academic, understand the importance of these questions, not all authors stop to answer them. This article defines readability and offers suggestions to enhance the readability of a document and communicate ideas with greater clarity and precision.
What is Readability?
Readability is a measure of how easy it is to read a text. It requires the reader to
a) identify the words on the page,
b) construct an understanding from those words, and
c) identify words and construct meaning so that reading is an automatic and accurate process.
Readers are more likely to understand and engage with a piece of writing if the author has focused on making it readable.
The readability of a text is determined by its level of complexity, its legibility, typography, and readers’ familiarity with it. Good writing communicates ideas in a way that readers can quickly and easily understand. Great writing feels effortless to read. All writers should help their readers effortlessly follow along as their writing guides them through stories, concepts, ideas, and theories.
How to Improve Readability in Writing
Here are 7 useful suggestions to make writing more accessible and readable:
1. Avoid Using Polysyllabic Words
Shorter words are easier to read and understand. Writers should, for example, avoid using “deleterious” if “hurtful” or “harmful” works just as well. It is also important to consider the vocabulary of the target audience; words like “obviate” and “amalgamation” might be easily comprehensible to professors and readers of academic journals, but using them in an article for a college magazine is likely to cost the author a sizable chunk of their readership.
2. Keep Sentences Short and to the Point
Many academic writers have a tendency to write long convoluted sentences that often fail to hold readers’ attention. Complex or long-winded sentences only serve to confuse readers and distract them from the really important ideas and information in the text.
A good solution is to break a long sentence into several shorter ones, following the principle of “one idea per sentence,” which basically means starting a new sentence for every new idea. Many students make the mistake of trying to write “great” sentences to impress their professor, believing that a good writer must fill their work with unique, memorable sentences. It is actually a lot easier, quicker, and far more fruitful to write simple, to-the-point sentences that clearly communicate the writer’s ideas. These sentences and ideas can then be strung together to form a cohesive and highly readable whole. As in almost everything else, simple is always better.
3. Use Fewer Adjectives and Adverbs
Also called “modifiers,” adjectives and adverbs modify the meaning of the nouns and verbs they accompany. This modification process forces the reader’s brain to work harder to assimilate the extra information. Adjectives and adverbs should therefore be avoided unless they are vital to the meaning of a sentence.
4. Avoid Using Jargon
Most kinds of academic writing use language that people from outside that discipline are less likely to understand. Hence, it is important that authors keep their target audience in mind while writing and use layperson terms instead of insider jargon unless the text specifically calls for it. It is worth noting that too much jargon is considered unacceptable even if the text is aimed at a scholarly audience. Highly proficient readers in general still prefer the time saved by plain English.
When it is absolutely imperative to use a complex or obscure term, it is the author’s duty to help their readers understand exactly what it means, ideally in the same sentence or the next one. This can be done with the help of parentheses, footnotes, or endnotes containing a definition or an explanation of the term in question.
5. Break up the Text into Manageable Chunks
Just as polysyllabic words and run-on sentences tend to diminish the readability of a document, unnecessarily long paragraphs can frustrate and defeat readers even before they have begun reading. A readable text divides information into lots of smaller paragraphs and uses bulleted lists and headers where possible.
6. Use Subheadings
Many readers like to skim text in order to gather information from it. If the text is too long, a generous use of subheadings makes the process of reading easier by allowing the reader to absorb more information in a shorter period of time.
Subheadings allow the brain to rest for a moment before resuming the process of reading. Without this tiny and not very noticeable break, readers may get tired and give up, often without knowing why. A sub-heading every now and then refreshes the brain and helps the reader better absorb the information the author is trying to share.
Subheadings also help authors stay on track by keeping their work organized, particularly if they have a tendency to ramble or go off on tangents.
7. Organize Information
It is not enough for a text to have all the information the reader needs. This information needs to be well-organized, so readers can easily find and use it and thus avoid wasting their time and energy. A poorly organized piece of writing confuses readers and makes them give up on it.
An author might find it helpful to think of things their readers need to know and arrange them in sequential order. What do they need to know first? Second? Third? And so on. Large chunks of information can be grouped in lists, maybe even a checklist for readers to download and print if required.
As has been repeatedly mentioned above, reading a text should be an effortless exercise. If it feels like hard work, only a few dedicated readers will plough on to the end.
There are several methods for measuring the readability of a text. These include the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score, the Coleman-Liau Index, the Gunning-Fog Score, the Automated Readability Index, and the SMOG Index. Readability scores, however, are just numbers based on sentence length and the frequency of polysyllabic words in a text. They should only be used as a guideline to give writers a general idea of how easy their work is to read.
