OCTOBER 2024 HEARTBEAT

The message rang loud and clear when two professional development emails with the same premise landed in my inbox within moments of each other last week. Enough’s enough, too much drops readership, and, really, who would read that four-inch-long paragraph whether in print or on a screen? 

Writing coach, author, encourager, and professional speaker Ann Wylie shared this.  

According to 130 years of readability research:

• The more you write, the less readers read. 
• The more information you give people, the less likely they are to be able to do what you want them to do with it. 
• The longer your paragraph, the more likely readers are to skip it. 
• The longer your sentence, the less readers understand. 
• The longer and more jargony your words, the less readers read and understand.

This isn’t rocket science. We’re busy. Our inboxes are full to overflowing. Our time is limited.  

When preparing communications for our clients, we try to be mindful of all of these truths and say the most with the fewest words. Even when it’s complicated. Even when it’s dense. Even when it’s important. We aren’t always successful, but we try! 

Readability requires us to understand our audience and know how to get the point across succinctly.

For years, we followed the dollar bill rule. If you have a block of text the size of a piece of paper currency or larger, it’s too much! Break it up, pare it down, or divide it in two.  

Then came Steve and Cindy Crescenzo’s email on communication trends and best practices with this nugget:

CONTENT is the same as it was 25 years ago. Boring, stiff, formal, too long, not visual enough, not written for the screen, not written for modern audiences who have ZERO attention spans. 

If you’re thinking, “But, we’re different! We have to share ALL the things!” You’re wrong. You have to share in digestible bites and make available longer-former versions for readers to grab if/when they can.  

And we can help.