on Systems Thinking

The “Easier to Read’ series on writing tips helps reliability professionals make their reports easier to understand. The series heps technical professionals gain an understanding of how social media has impacted traditional writing. In some cases, the shift is obviously toward shorter, direct styles. In other cases, the shift returns to good practices that we have simply forgotten. Either way, the shift is real and impacts all of our reliability reports and other forms of technical communication.

What Inspired the “Easier to Read’ Series

Most of my inspiration comes from the people and projects we encounter through our consulting practice, JD Solomon Solutions. Such was the case here.

A few months ago, one of the technical professionals on a reliability assessment project commented that I posted a lot of articles on social media. He asked what I got out of it, and I replied that one of the things was improved writing. I suggested he give it a try. The idea for the series came when he asked me to give him some tips on how to get started.

Readability formulas determine how easily a specific audience can understand a text. There are more than a dozen readability formulas, such as Flesch Reading Ease, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), the Gunning-FOG Index, and the Coleman-Liau Index. Many Google, Microsoft, and Adobe products have a built-in readability formula. Editing tools such as Grammarly do, too. The one big thing to remember is that too much attention to readability scores does not mean your writing is easier to comprehend or understand.

How it Works

Most readability formulas use some combination of sentence length, the average number of words per sentence, the average number of characters per word, or the number of words with three or more syllables. You can use the formulas to score text by hand. The results from these formulas are often given as a grade level, such as “4th grade” or “12th grade.”

How much should you pay attention to readability scores generated from tools like the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula? As a technical professional, you probably should pay careful attention. But remember, while improving the Flesch-Kincaid score is important for accessibility and readability, balancing this with accurately conveying the technical information is essential.

What’s readability?

Readability is a quality of your business writing. People will be able to understand your sentences easily if your text’s readability is high. If the readability is low, people still might understand what you’re saying, but reading your text is likely a draining experience, but people may still understand it.

Big words and complex sentences aren’t bad. Using too many of them demands much more concentration from your reader. Big words and complex sentences are also harder if someone’s first language is not yours or the reader has some form of visual or hearing impairment.

Headings are vital in improving accessibility for vision-impaired individuals by providing structure, navigation, and context. Headings make content more understandable and usable for those who rely on screen readers and other assistive technologies when used correctly.

Good Practices

It’s essential to follow good practices to create accessible text with headings.

1. Use Semantic HTML Element

Use proper HTML headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to create a hierarchical structure. Avoid using other formatting (e.g., bold text) as a substitute for headings.