How old are your readers?

In his newsletter last week, internet psychologist Graham Jones  mentioned research that had looked into what makes some web content more shareable than others.

The researchers had analysed articles on Medium, and found there were several key factors.

One was the length of the content – around 1,800 words ( approximately 7 minutes reading time).

Another was the the “reading age”.

Graham wrote:

“The study on Medium shows that the content that gains the most engagement has a reading age of 11.”

In terms of their reading age, how old are your readers?

Graham also said:

“Typically for most business websites that I examine the reading age averages around 17 years…The Times newspaper has a reading age of 12; the Daily Mail has a reading age of 10. The reading age of the script on the 10 o’clock news is about ten as well. It is no coincidence that the world’s most popular media have low reading ages. Whatever you might think of the BBC or the Times or CNN or your favourite magazine, one thing unites them all – low reading ages. Most websites have language which is far too complicated.”

Of course, it’s not always easy to describe complicated things using simple language. We may need to describe tiny differences and modalities. However, we should aim for clear and simple language as often as possible.

A related factor was the number of words in a sentence. Graham reported the study found that the most shared content was that which had sentences that were between 12 and 15 words. This matches with best practice at places such as the Government Digital Service, where the aim is to write 11 words per sentence.

Even if your readers are much, much older than eleven, it may be a good idea to pretend they are.

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