Can They Read What You Wrote on Medium?
How to Make Your Writing Readable
Not all writing is readable. Some writing is dreadful. Some is redundant. Some is boring. Some is convoluted. Reading your writing out loud helps you find these problems.
How to Read Writing
Part one: Read Out Loud
I landed my first editing job as a graduate student at Indiana University. My degree would be in Modern European History with a emphasis on British history. I’d also get a certificate in Victorian Studies
Graduate students need to pay for their education so I accepted a position as Assistant Managing Editor for Victorian Studies (an interdisciplinary academic journal focusing on England in the 19th century).
One of my jobs required reading galley proofs for errors. (Galley proofs are the form your book comes in before it’s published.) The journal would receive two sets of galley proofs. Then the Managing Editor (also a graduate student) and I, each with our own set of galleys, read every word of the next issue out loud to each other. Our boss, the Editor of Victorian Studies insisted.
The next year I became Managing Editor and I taught the Assistant Managing Editor to read every word of the galleys out loud with me. Every 20 minutes or so we’d change who was reading out loud and who was reading silently.
Many years later and no longer a student, I was teaching at Ohio State University. My department chair said she’d lower my teaching load if I’d accept the editorship of the NWSA Journal (Now Feminist Formations).
So I became the first editor of the NWSA Journal (the journal of the National Women’s Studies Association). To help with this daunting task, I had two graduate students and an administrative assistant— just like the old days at Victorian Studies.
And just like before, we received two sets of galley proofs, reading every single word of the next issue out loud. When the graduate students and the administrative assistant whined, I’d bring home what we hadn’t finished and ask Eric to help me read out loud.
I still read everything I write out loud — including every post on Medium. (I read my annual Christmas letter out loud.)
Why Should You Read Your Writing Out Loud?
Reading out loud screams if your writing doesn’t flow. If you forgot a period or a sentence is four lines long, reading out loud catches the errors. If you can’t remember comma rules, it doesn’t matter. Reading out loud will tell you where you need a comma.
You’ll discover instantly if your reading is readable. And you don’t have to read some boring manual on writing and or memorize comma rules . . . or most punctuation rules for that matter.
Rules are not as strict as they used to be, at least for those who aren’t writing academic or technical articles. If your punctuation makes a sentence readable, that’s enough.
Apostrophes are a different matter. Get those right! (Big difference in meaning between “it’s” and “its.”)
Our brain knows how to stop at commas and periods. Our voice follows our brain. In other words, our brain, on an unconscious level, knows what to do when we’re reading out loud. It will tell you to “Stop now. Put in a comma.” Or “You need a period here.”
Our brain hates complex, convoluted sentences. Read such a sentence out loud, and you’ll hate it too!
But Wait: Reading out loud does not take the place of careful proofreading!
Part Two: Make It Simple
Luckily for my writing, I’m an historian. Most people can read most of what academic historians write. You could easily read my PhD dissertation. You might not find it interesting, but you’d understand it.
Sadly history is one of the few fields that can be read by everyone. Science and math are impossible if you have no training in science or math.
And oddly enough, most academic literary criticism is even worse as it’s become annoyingly theoretical. You may have loved the novel, but reading what an English professor has written about the novel is incomprehensible.
When I was editing at Victorian Studies and the NWSA Journal, we never accepted an article that couldn’t be read by everyone. Both journals did occasionally publish science articles but only if readable by non-scientists.
Assuming you’re not a molecular biologist writing to other molecular biologists, your writing needs to be readable to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of interests and expertise.
Part Three: Nine Tips for Readability
- Avoid jargon and long words. I want to read what you wrote without using a dictionary.
- Avoid topics so esoteric I can’t understand what you’re writing.
- Forget what your English teacher told you. Seven-line or seven-sentence paragraphs are too long for today’s readers. Assume your reader is reading your story on her phone. A large block of text will fill the screen.
- Use sub-headings to break up the text.
- Avoid too many sub-headings. One for each paragraph is too many.
- Use numbered lists and writing templates if your head isn’t swimming with writing ideas, and you’re new at writing often.
- Avoid overuse of number 6.
- Skip the slang and words other people may find offensive.
- Tell personal stories, especially if you’re writing motivational or self-help, pieces. We’re drowning in these topics. Many are redundant. Your story makes you stand out. Use “I” even though your teacher said not to use “I.”
Looking for readers, claps, comments, reposting by a reader, your link in someone else’s post? Read your post out loud, proofread, and follow the nine tips above for readability.
Make proofreading easy with this checklist:
Suggestions for finding topics to write about:
