Dooley Online

Word Documents: Configuring readability stats

A colleague sent this to me and I thought I'd share it with you.

Here is how you set up the "readability" option for Word documents.

 

In Word, go to:

• Tools 
• Options 
• Spelling & Grammar
• Down in the "grammar" box, check "Show readability statistics," click OK

You're set. Now, anytime you're done running a spell check of a Word document, a box will pop up that will show your the readability stats, including:

• Percent of "passive sentences" (you want the number to zero or at least very low)
• Flesch Reading Ease, which is the readability on a scale of 0 to 100 (you want the number to be high)
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level shows you the grade-level of reading for your document (Hemingway is usually grade-school level, newspaper articles should be junior-high level, WRI reports should probably be about high-school level or arguably lower)  

(See Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test for more information)

Importance of Writing for the Web

The post Ten Practical Tips for Writing in English (Jarkko Laine) is a gem of an article which comes from a Finnish author wrestling with how to write more effectively online.

She provides the following simple tips with lots of links to online resources:

1. Read in English
2. Listen to native speakers
3. When writing in English, think in English
4. Write
5. Trust your gut
6. Proofread
7. Have English-speaking friends who are not afraid to correct your English
8. Study spelling and grammar
9. Commas and hyphenation -- the tricky buggers
10. Relax

I wonder if these tips translate to writing in other languages?

I also thought about how these might be transmuted into a howto list for blogging/web writing in general (isn't everything worth reading a blog these days)?

1. Read blogs
2. Read and apply howto's on blogging
3. When writing a blog, think about your purpose and your readers
4. Write (every day)
5. Trust your gut
6. Proofread (okay, we all agree that typos are part of blogging, but they do distract and you take a hit in the area of expertise)
7. Read (and respond to) your comments
8. Read and apply howto's on writing for the web
9. Use short paragraphs, short sentences, bulleted lists and avoid over-punctuation
10. Relax and enjoy the ride

This, however, doesn't address the need for incorporating images or other multimedia to better express your media. So I might add the following.

• Use graphics to express complex information (a picture says a thousand words)