http://www.see-a-voice.org/marketing-ad/effective-communication/readability/

Readability

The average reading age of the UK population is 9 years – that is, they have achieved the reading ability normally expected of a 9 year old.
The Guardian has a reading age of 14 and the Sun has a reading age of 8.

Considering the readability of your copy will benefit many people, including blind and partially sighted people.

This is an example of a possible paragraph written for the access page of a brochure:

At every performance where audio description is provided, there is also an opportunity for a touch tour of the stage and set. Touch tours give visually impaired patrons an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the set and costumes before the show to enhance their enjoyment of the production.

This sample has a reading age of 24 and, therefore, it excludes the vast majority of its intended readers.

Here is an alternate version of the copy:

There will be a touch tour before every audio described performance. This gives you the chance get to know the set and costumes. Patrons tell us this means they enjoy the show more.

It now has a reading age of 10. All we’ve done is use shorter sentences and shorter, everyday words.

On the DOWNLOADS page you can print out instructions on how to calculate the reading age of a piece of text using the FOG INDEX or a tool within Microsoft WORD.

Scannable copy

One way of improving readability for everyone is to create scannable copy. This makes it easy for people to go quickly to the information they are interested in.

Take a look at the extracts overleaf from The Sun and The Guardian on 25 August 2008. Which one is easiest to scan and why?

What you can do …

• Use bold to take the reader to key words.

• Use meaningful subheadings (explain what’s in it for them).

I found your diary with  a date to meet
A friend  you loved and cherished all these years
But life itself made that a  raw, cold cheat
For when it came you were no longer here.

I admired your life force and your wit
The act, illusion, call it what we must.
You did not hurry into death’s cold pit
Nor where you eager to  break down into dust

Yet you did not fight  the coming freeze
Like a cat that senses its own end
No longer could  you speak, yet  lay at ease
Until the curtain’s calm and kind descent

On New Year’s  Day two thousand and fifteen
We  did not know that this was our last scene

Shall I miss the journeys that we made
Up sheer cliffs and through deep muddy yards
Chased by  geese and then in heather laid?
I cannot catch you now, it is too far.

You cleaned my boots back in the cottage sweet
On the bed, you covered  me in  coats
Tenderly you stroked my crooked feet
And hot and sugared tea you once more brought

A dog stopped by and held out its clean paw
It shook your hand and gazed with amber eyes
Remote and cold, the Hartland Cliffs we saw
Where have you got to now, my love, disguised?

Danger and delight then drew us on
I cannot find your face, where have you gone?

Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;
Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?
Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,
And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me. the sound of the sea
Where you will next be there’s no knowing,
Facing round about me everywhere,
With your nut-coloured hair,
And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going. Emma’s rose pink cheeks
Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; the places where you often used to go
Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;
What have you now found to say of our past –
Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?
Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?
Things were not lastly as firstly well
With us twain, you tell? twain – two
But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision. derision – mocking
I see what you are doing: you are leading me on
To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, often used to go
The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone
At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,
And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow
That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,
When you were all aglow,
And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!
Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, flitting – moving quickly from place to place
The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, preen – clean themselves, arrange their feathers
Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, ghosts are said to vanish at daybreak
For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.
Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours, lours – looks gloomy
The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!
I am just the same as when
Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

From Valediction:

“In this exile called old age
I live between nostalgia and rage.
This is the land of fools and fear.
Thanks be. I’m lucky to be here.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11127571/Dannie-Abse-his-greatest-poems.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/27/poetry.schools

“Finally, the acid test: now the process is over, will the students involved be hooked on poetry? “I think so,” Summers says, thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that it’ll have made them into natural-born purchasers of every poetry collection that comes out – I wouldn’t blame them if it hadn’t – but I certainly think it made them see that there is a much bigger world of poetry out there than they’d realised. The generic curse of the way poetry is delivered at secondary level these days is that it’s about appreciation, not readership. The situation these kids found themselves in – three days to read with no pressure on them apart from having to make a few cups of coffee – was a privilege, a luxury. And I don’t think it’s one they’ll forget.” Morrissey agrees: “I think the students felt quite” – she hesitates – “liberated, in a way, by the fact that this was primarily an exercise in enthusiasm, not criticism. There was a power in going off the curriculum and not having to constantly consider and quantify that they responded to. It was really fresh. Hopefully the readers will feel that, too.”

It looks as though they do. A copy of Fifty Strong has been sent out to every secondary school and sixth form college in the UK, and so far the responses have been resoundingly positive. Paul Summers thinks he knows why. “Without them being pushed, they covered everything – from domestic violence to bloody war in the former Yugoslavia to broken hearts and death,” he says “That pretty much sums it up.”

What our teenage reviewers thought

‘A lively and absorbing collection’

There’s a poem for every young person to relate to in Fifty Strong. This mature selection conveys powerful emotions while covering a broad range of topics including love, death, war and adoption. I particularly liked the use of poems from other languages and cultures and found it interesting to see them written in their original to

The advantage of having a poetry anthology selected by teenagers for teenagers is that all the poems reflect aspects of adolescent life. It ensures that the anthology includes not only the obviously teenage poems that deal with unrequited love, betrayal, and loneliness, but also poems that address important wider issues “