Brand Hub Archive
Readability
Readability covers grade level, sentence length and passive voice in written web content.
- sentences of no more than 20 words
- active rather than passive voice
- a grade level of no greater than 9 (research content up to grade 12)
Why readability is important
As a web editor the aim isn't to ‘dumb down’ the page, but to make it accessible to more people.
Readability doesn’t only matter to people with a low reading age. Just because you can read high grade content, do you always want to?
Better readability makes content easier for everyone to digest. It allows the user to comprehend the information much more effectively and efficiently.
Reading comprehension research
Research shows that when average sentence length is 14 words, readers understand more than 90% of what they’re reading. At 43 words, comprehension drops to less than 10%.
Dyslexic users
"Compared to their non-dyslexic peers, individuals with dyslexia were significantly less accurate and marginally slower on passive sentences."
This quote is taken from Wiseheart, Altmann, Park, et al.'s 'Sentence comprehension in young adults with developmental dyslexia (2009)'.
Blind or partially-sighted users
There was a 2020 Oslo Metropolitan University study into screen reader use. It determined most participants exhibited the highest comprehension and lowest workload with sentences comprising 16–20 words.
Experts/researcher users
Research shows grade level 13 or above requires too much effort for all audiences. It’s accepted there’s a need for necessary jargon for expert audiences, but the rest of this guidance applies.
