How To Write Effortlessly To Increase Content Readability

When you are writing online, there is no guarantee that anyone will actually read your writings. Now you need some key strategies that will compel them to read that. And one way to do so is to ensure that your words impacting people in the right ways.

That okay if you are not sure where to start. You will come to know several ways and steps that you can write and drive the audience to read every word you write.

What is Readability?

Readability is the level of ease to read and understand a text or paragraph. In today busy lifestyle, no one has enough time to read long sentences and complex wording.

Why is readability important?

Having a great idea for something in mind is not enough. You must have the ability to communicate your idea with readers so they can easily get it. If writing something like that users read it, and feel like working then a few enthusiastic readers read to end.

However, if reading your content feels effortless, then you can entertain a lot of readers. Readability is important everywhere for better ranking, getting more traffic, improved engagement, and more conversions.

How to Create Effortlessly Readable Writing?

According to Jakob Nielsen Norman, one of the most influential experts of web writing says that users only read 20% of the text on an average page. There are some practices that you should know to increase that percentage. Here they are:

Be Concise:

  • Everything you want to say, try to say in as few words as possible.
  • Don’t provide lengthy details
  • Don’t repeat similar information again and again with different words
  • Don’t overuse the passive voice
  • Don’t load on the adverbs
  • By applying these points, you can get 58% better results than normal.

Good text design

  • Besides the vocabulary and syntax, text design has a great effect on readability
  • Don’t use fancy fonts
  • Need to pick a font which is easy to read
  • Use Time New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, and Open Sans
  • Font size must not too big and not too small
  • Generally, body text font size should be around 10 to 16 depending on the font 
  • Headings and subheadings should be slightly bigger font size
  • Line length should be between 9 to 12 words or 50 to 60 characters
  • You can use tables, bullet points and text decorations to emphasis on different keywords
  • Use 1 image for every 100 words
  • Chose the headline font similar to body font
  • Use contrast color of the font with background-color
  • Avoid scrolling text and animated gifts

Use of easy and short words

  • Use the most relevant and easy words
  • If you use difficult words like inordinate then you are going to lose many of your readers
  • Use readable that will help you in picking short words by suggesting synonyms  
  • Don’t use long words like 4-syllable if 2-syllable word work well as well
  • The longer words you write, the harder they are read  

Shorten your sentences

  • By writing, your sentence short will definitely increase readability
  • If you have long sentences in your content then, try to break them into several short sentences to increase readability
  • Do this by focusing on one main idea for each sentence
  • Use contractions to make your sentences short

Avoid jargon

  • Before writing you must have to know who your targeted audience is
  • When you are writing just, imagine that you are talking with someone else in real life
  • Write according to their needs and demands
  • Make information available to them in a way that is easier for them to understand.
  • When you write in those tones, then automatically you use short and simple words and avoid jargon.

Break up your copy

  • A long-written word and sentences are the main reason for low readability
  • Same as words and sentences long paragraphs also confuse the reader and don’t get your main point from that paragraph.
  • Focus on one main idea for each paragraph
  • If you have more than one idea in a sentence, don’t write in one sentence, start a new sentence is a good one. 

Write for Scanners:

  • Researchers found that 79% of the people scan web pages, so why not make them easy by writing for them.
  • Use of highlighting, bold and color which makes paragraphs more noticeable
  • Use subheadings that tell scanners exactly what they need to know
  • Use bullet points 
  • Use of whitespaces
  • Use of single point paragraphs
  • Use of inverted pyramid presentation

Use Objective Language:

  • 80% of readers like facts and figures rather than hype.
  • Don’t be subjective, be fair with readers 
  • Don’t boast without proof
  • Don’t exaggerate things

Make sure that your content has the maximum readability score. By considering, all these above points increase your readability to prevent your readers from leaving your page before they read your whole content. These kinds of written paragraphs are performed 124% more than the simple one. These kinds of writings can bring more traffic, gain more attention of readers, great engagement, and many more conversions.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.