Hi Everyone! I am George Pierce and this post is about writing at too high a level. It is a common mistake that some of us might make, and the reason for this post is that it is one that I made today. It can be a costly mistake online or offline. Why? This is a mistake that alienates (oops-grin), repels, and repulses your reader or listener. In either case, talking or writing at a college level is NOT recommended. Depending on who you listen to, most experts seem to recommend that we write at a 7th-grade level, no higher than an eighth-grade level. If you think that writing at that level might insult a higher educated audience, the experts seem to agree that it is not a problem. In fact, most of the best-selling novels are at a seventh-grade level.
How To Find The Reading Level Of Your Content!
Above is a partial snapshot of a post getting ready for a web page and a video. The tool that you see above is free from Wordcounter dot net. Similar word counter tools are available for free, type word counter into your search box to find them. One of many things that it reveals is the "Reading Level", see the right-hand column.
Typically, the solution to lowering the reading level is to 'dumb it down', which is to choose other, more common words instead of lesser-known words or multisyllabic words (I am doing this on purpose), in other words, perhaps write 'words that have a lot of syllables'.
In the above example, there are no alternate choices for words such as Beta-glutan. What you can do in that case is to ADD an explanation, a description, or a definition. Notice that longer or lesser-known words such as Beta-glucan, or Wheat Detrin are followed by "which is" and then a description. It so happened that there are many longer words, which did not seem to have an alternate 'dumbed down' option.
In that case, I hope this helps us remember that we have to be like Lucy!??
When Ricky says, "Lucy, you got some splainin' to do."
If you must use higher level words, that you cannot dumb down, just do some splainin'.
Thank you for reading.
Much success,
George Pierce
PS. For free make-money online training, visit my YT channel.
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