Monday, December 24, 2007

How Readable is Your Blog?

Happy holidays everyone!

I've been on a holiday break since yesterday. I've opted to not accept any writing or editing jobs until after tomorrow (Christmas). This has given me the time to rest and, now, blog a bit.

How readable is your blog?

I believe that this is a very valid question. Surfing through different blogs and posts has got me thinking about this.

Sometimes when reading through posts, I'll skip through one that is too text strong. The paragraphs are too long and they just make my eyes tear up. Does this sound like your blog?

For a new blogger, you may want to start thinking about making your posts more readable. Do it for your reader. They will appreciate it.

How can you tell if it is readable?

There are several ways you can do this. A simple way is to read it on your own. If your own post makes you want to kill yourself or requires a drop of Eye-mo after each paragraph, then it might be about time to make a few changes in your writing style.

A less subjective way would be to check a readability index. After looking through Freelance Writing Jobs, I came across a post recently about "Foggy Writing". It was actually the inspiration for this most recent post. It suggested readability.info for all your needs. It uses several different formulas and score indexes to check readability.

I used this site and found out my Fog Index (an index used to check readability) is at an ideal level. You should try it out just to have an idea.

What can you do?

There are several things you can do. Rather than re-writing what has already been said, I can give you links to helpful posts on the subject.

The article I read, "On Foggy Writing", actually gives several helpful tips.

I also came across a post on avoiding "text deserts"by Ryan Caldwell. Check it out. It gives five helpful tips.

Hope this helps!

Again, happy holidays to all of you!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this post! I tried out the Gunning fog index on a few of my "serious" blog entries, and they all got around 15 (i.e. requiring 3 years of post-high school studies to be understandable)--yikes! Though in my defense, "capoeira" is a 4-syllable word... :P

Richard "D-cal" Dacalos said...

Well yea.. and the fact that it an unfamiliar word to most might have contributed to that number hehe..

Capoeira still comes up as an incorrect spelling in my auto-correct for MS Word.. hehehe

It's a good guide though. As the article i linked to said. You shouldn't follow the rules too much. You might end up sounding like a robot..

Anonymous said...

Haha don't worry, I have no intention of totally revamping my writing style over one test! Heh, I just tried out "capoeira" in my Word and it wasn't flagged, although if it ever was I probably just added it to the dictionary straightaway XD

hex said...

try this, a blog readability test.
http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx

Of course it might not be accurate but I was amused by the result this blog got. :)

Richard "D-cal" Dacalos said...

thanks for the find gem! :D

yea funny how much the result changed in a few posts..

it might have been the "doppelganger" post..

who knows what happened hehe