

How to increase site conversion by writing for an 8th grade reading level . . . - aresant
http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increasing-site-conversion-by-writing-for-an-8th-grade-reading-level/

======
tokenadult
This should be unremarkable to college-educated adults who notice what most
people read FOR FUN. A website people visit to meet a personal need shouldn't
be any harder to read than what people read for fun. Otherwise, some easier to
use website will gain market share at the expense of the harder website. Even
most college-educated adults don't read outside their own area of
specialization at any reading level higher than about a junior high level--as
can be verified by the reading level of most best-selling books. (This can
also be verified by the reading level of most highly upvoted submissions to
HN. Anything that is the least bit scholarly doesn't get many upvotes.
Amateurish blogs that misrepresent research but have a simple reading level--
present submission excepted--tend to get a lot of upvotes, because voters can
get through one or two paragraphs of those submissions to form an opinion on
them.)

After checking a Gunning Fog online test:

The Gunning Fog index is 14.46

The number of major punctuation marks, eg. [.], was 7. The number of words was
151. The number of 3+ syllable words, highlighted in blue, was 22.

~~~
ableal
(You did that on purpose, right?)

Gunning Fog Grade = 0.4 x [ words/sentences + 100 x (hard_words/words)]

Words = 157, sentences = 7, hard_words = 10 or so

G.F.Grade = 0.4 x (22.43 + 6.37) = 11.52

I award bonus points for the single paragraph wall of text ;-)(doesn't seem
contemplated here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index> , but it
should be ...)

P.S.

The Wikipedia page lists this calculator site:
<http://simbon.madpage.com/Fog/> , which calculates 14.46.

It is thrown off by the en-dashes (counts 151 words), and counts 22 "3+
syllable words", including 'area' (true but amusing, given it's only five
letters).

~~~
tokenadult
Much of my occasional writing online illustrates the saying, "Easy writing
makes vile hard reading." Thanks for posting the scores.

Yes, to make writing easy to read takes effort at editing.

Now for a rewrite:

You can believe what the blog post says if you think about what most people
read FOR FUN. People who visit websites to get something done don't want that
to be hard. So a website shouldn't be any harder to read than what people read
for fun. Easy to use websites gain market share. Harder websites lose market
share.

Most adults don't read hard books except for their jobs. Most best-selling
books are written at a junior high reading level. The submissions to Hacker
News that get the most upvotes are usually also at a simple reading level. An
HN submission with the reading level of scholarly writing doesn't get many
upvotes. Blog posts with a simple reading level get more upvotes, because
voters can understand them.

Moral of the story: keep your writing simple if you want to sell anything
online.

After submitting to a Gunning Fog website:

The Gunning Fog index is 6.705

The number of major punctuation marks, eg. [.], was 12 The number of words was
142. The number of 3+ syllable words, highlighted in blue, was 7.

~~~
ableal
I apologize for the off-topic - I actually mostly agree with you. I'll also
confess that I'm partly using the comments as a sort of notebook on the
interesting stuff that shows up here.

------
samratjp
Fwiw, Google Docs has Gunning Fog and many other measurements under tools (I
believe?).

------
olefoo
If you want to implement this in your own tool set there's a python module
known as Readability that has Gunning-Fog and other tests.

<http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Readability>

