Last month I wrote about the duration of people’s attentionspan, and this month I want to take on a related, equally important questionthat I hear a lot. It is phrased something like this: “My learners often don’tunderstand my training. Should I start writing at an eighth-grade level?”
What is going on here? Are our employees such poor readersthat they can’t understand our simple sentences?
In fact, research does show that reading has declined a little among Americans. Butfor the most part, the decline is small, and I do not think that the employee’spoor comprehension is the result of their reading skills. Instead, I think thecommunication breakdown has to do with the fact that we, as teachers, arewriting in ways that do not conform to the way the human brain expects toreceive ideas.
We will explore this idea over the coming months, and I’d liketo begin by exploring exactly what we mean by the idea of “writing at a gradelevel.”
What is the “grade level”of writing?
You have probably heard the newscasts claiming that theaverage American reads at the ninth-grade level. What does this mean?
The “grade level” of a piece of prose is determined bycalculating two factors: the length of the average sentence and the sophisticationof the vocabulary. In short, we assume that bigger words and longer sentencesmake sentences harder to comprehend. For example, the US Navy developed thewell-known “Flesch-Kincaid” test in 1975. Their equation is as follows:
According to the developers, if a passage scores about 100(i.e., its sentences have just a few words and those words have few syllables) an11-year-old can easily understand it. If the passage has a score of 60 a14-year-old can understand it, and if it has a score of 30 university students canunderstand it. You can check this out for yourself using this online readability tester.
This equation looks very sophisticated, and as a result, itcreates the illusion that an equation can define meaning. In fact, however,very short sentences with simple words can have little meaning. Consider Noam Chomsky’s famous statement:
Colorless green ideas sleepfuriously.
This sentence has onlyfive words, each word is familiar, and the sentence is grammatically correct.However, this simple sentence has no detectable meaning for anyone.
In contrast, almost anyone can understand some long sentenceswith complex words:
We hold these truths to beself-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by theirCreator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty andthe pursuit of Happiness.
How long should my sentences be?
Keep in mind that a sentence is a unit of expression thatexpresses a single idea, so your sentences should be exactly the length youneed to communicate your ideas to your reader. In general, short sentences areeasy to write, they are easy to read, but they can usually communicate onlysimple ideas: “See Jane Run.” If your training concepts are straightforward,you can probably get away with sentences averaging 8 to 12 words.
In general, longer sentences are harder to write and they areharder to read, but as sentences grow longer they are capable of communicatingmore sophisticated ideas and more nuanced meaning. The problem is that whensentences get longer, most writers have difficulty managing the grammaticalstructures and hence their reader is likely to get confused. If your trainingconcepts are complex, you should probably provide sentences that average 20 to 25words.
Vocabulary
The second component of complex language has to do withvocabulary. Let’s do a simple experiment:
As you know, some trainers use fancylanguage just to impress the learner with their knowhow. This is silly. Whenyou use unfamiliar words, it slows the reader, and it obscures your meaning.
Now let’s compare those sentences with the following:
As you know, some trainers usesesquipedalians just to impress the learner with their knowhow. This is silly.When you use sesquipedalians, it slows the reader, and it obscures yourmeaning.
Which passage does a better job communicating ideas?
For most people the second passage is much less clear becausethe term sesquipedalian is unfamiliar. In fact, the word sesquipedalian justmeans “big word” (“sesqui” means “one-and-a-half,” and the root “ped” refers to“feet;” hence, sesqui-ped-alian refers to words that are one-and-a-half feetlong). Most people find that the first passage, with its clear andunderstandable terms, much easier to comprehend.
This does not mean that you should only use simple words. Mywriting mentor, Dr. George Gopen at Duke University, advised me that I shouldalways use the simplest possible “perfect word.” If I am choosing between wordswhich essentially have the same meaning, for example “use” and “utilize,” alwayspick the simpler one because it will make the point without placing any extracognitive burden on the reader.
However, there are times when you must select a less familiarterm because it conveys exactly the meaning you want. This is especially truewith compliance training or when you need to make a company policy crystalclear.
Choosing the perfect word is a challenge that forces you tochoose between a common word that is close to your intended meaning and a moreobscure word that has exactly the right meaning. This choice is part of thefine art of writing and you will need to decide whether the benefit offamiliarity is more important that having the exactly correct word.
Should I worry about thegrade level of writing?
Some trainers complain that Americans are poor readers andthat we need to be “writing down” in order to reach them. In contrast, my take-homemessage is that you do not need to worry about levels of writing. “Levels” arejust a silly shorthand that says nothing about meaning or efficacy. Instead,you need to worry about clarity of your expression and whether you aredelivering lessons in a form that is compatible with the learner’s brain.
Is there a justification for writing long sentences and usingan advanced vocabulary in training? In my opinion, the answer is … sometimes.In some conditions, our training task is straightforward and simple shortsentences are sufficient. At other times, however, our ideas are complex and weneed longer sentences and less familiar terms to make ourselves perfectlyclear.
In the coming months, we will look at how your brain processesthe written word and provide you with a series of tricks and techniques thatwill help you speak coherently and in a language that the brain understands.
Digging deeper
If you want to writemore effectively, George Gopen’s TheSense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective and Strunk andWhite’s The Elements of Style are twoindispensable places to start. And if you have favorite guides to writing, Iencourage you to share them in the comments section.
If you would like to have your memory of thisarticle boosted, send an email to [email protected].You will automatically receive a series of boosters on this three-article series.The boosters take only seconds to complete, and they will profoundly increaseyour ability to recall the content of these article.
