Stop Thinking You Need to Dumb Down Your Articles for Medium

I analyzed the top 10 popular articles for the day, and this is what I discovered.

If you read Medium articles on how to succeed at writing on Medium, you likely have seen the popular advice that you need to keep your writing level around a 6th-grade reading level.

The argument here is that the average American has around a 7th or 8th-grade reading level. Also, online reading is quite different than printed pages. When people read articles online, they tend to scan rather than read every word.

Now, writing at a 6th-grade reading level doesn't mean your writing is meant for 6th graders. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote at a 5th-grade reading level much of the time, and his works are not taught in grammar school.

However, I question the need to write at a 6th grade level for the Medium audience. For one thing, many Medium readers are also writers. Writers tend to read a lot. People who read a lot naturally read at higher levels than those who do not. Further, not every popular article on the internet is at a low reading level. The New York Times articles, for example, average a 10th-grade reading level.

But what about Medium? Do we really need to be shooting for 6th-grade reading levels to get more claps and reader engagement?

My Experiment

I decided to do one of my non-scientific studies to investigate reading levels on popular Medium articles. Yes, I call it non-scientific because, in a true study, we would need a much larger sample size spread out over a longer time. I stopped at 10 articles because, frankly, it grew tedious, and I grew bored. I decided 10 is a lovely, round number, and after all, this isn’t for a master’s thesis. It’s just my Saturday morning analysis of Medium articles.

I took what was “Popular on Medium” the morning of October 24th and chose the first 10 articles, in the order they were listed. I have included the number of claps and comments below to show the engagement level of each piece.

I then ran each article through the Hemingway Editor, which is a free app that gives you a readability score measured as a grade level. This app recommends writers aim for a 9th-grade reading level or below.

Top 10 List for the Morning of October 24th

1. Donald Trump’s Rich Black Friends Won’t Change the Election, but They’re Still Disappointing by Michael Arceneaux, Grade 11, 2.5K Claps, 31 Comments
2. The Only Four Books Bill Gates Has Rated Five Stars by Amardeep Parmar, Grade 7, 15.1K claps, 75 responses
3. I Watched My Friend Dying on Facebook. But It Was All a GoFundMe Scam. by Sarah Treleaven, Grade 11, 1.4K claps, 8 comments
4. 10 Signs the Pandemic Is About to Get Much Worse by Robert Roy Britt, Grade 10, 6.4K claps, 56 comments
5. Forget Shutdowns. It’s ‘Demand Shock’ That’s Killing Our Economy. by James Surowiecki, Grade 12, 2.3K claps, 34 comments
6. A Rude Awakening is Coming for Trump and His Supporters by Frank Lukacovic, Grade 8, 5.3K claps, 171 comments
7. A Radical Proposal for Dealing with Trump Supporters After Biden Wins by Russ Josephs, Grade 7, 15.5K claps, 398 comments
8. A Tale Of Two Kinds of Media Workers by Maya Kosoff, Grade 11, 1.4K claps, 7 comments
9. Ice Cube Isn’t Winning at Chess — He’s Losing at Poker by Scott Woods, Grade 8, 2.1K claps, 34 comments
10. Sixty Days of Chaos Will Follow Election Day by John Dean, Grade 9, 3.4K claps, 52 comments

Analysis

When we break it down by grade level, we see the following results:

• Grade 7: 2 articles
• Grade 8: 2 articles
• Grade 9: 1 article
• Grade 10: 1 article
• Grade 11: 3 articles
• Grade 12: 1 article

None of these were at a 6th-grade reading level. Six out of the 10 were at Grade 9 and above.

It’s entirely possible if we use a larger sample size, we’d end up with different results. But here are popular articles on Medium that are getting extensive reader engagement. And they aren’t at a 6th-grade reading level.

Interestingly enough, the article with the most claps (15.5K) was the article with the lowest grade level (Grade 7). The two articles with the least claps, at 1.4K each, were at Grade 11 reading levels.

Miscellaneous Random Thoughts

• Publications matter. Every one of these stories, except for Maya Kosoff’s A Tale of Two Kinds of Media Workers, was in a publication.
• 7 out of 10 either dealt with the pandemic or the upcoming election.
• You don’t need tens of thousands of claps to get on Medium’s most popular page. The claps ranged from 1.4K to 15.5K.
• I don’t know if these are truly the most popular stories for the day on Medium, or just what the Medium algorithm, or editors, decided to put out there.
• When I ran this article through the Hemingway editor, for a fun dose of irony, my article is at a 5th-grade reading level.

What does this mean for your writing?

It means you don’t have to agonize over bringing your reading level down. There are, of course, plenty of occasions when a lower reading level is ideal. A how-to article, for example, should be clear and concise. If you’re writing copy for a website selling products, you certainly don’t want to bog it down with a New York Times style reading level. But, if you’re writing an opinion piece on Medium, feel free to use higher-level words and longer sentences.

I’m not trying to argue that articles written at lower grade levels will do poorly. As we saw above, the one with the most claps was at a 7th-grade reading level.

My argument here is this. Write about what you want. Write about what brings you passion. Write in the style that matches your voice, whether that means a 5th-grade reading level or a 12th. Your readers can handle difficult words and longer sentences. Don’t be overly caught up on the common advice of the day.

And most importantly, don’t feel like you need to “dumb down” your writing to find Medium success. The top writers today certainly did not.