Bottom line; reading has changed. We skim. We speed read. We skip altogether. Sure, when you are ready to devour the next chapter of your favorite novel like a piece of chocolate cake and are excitedly looking forward to curling up somewhere comfortable and take your time reading each page. But the business blogs you follow? The eNewsletters you receive? The social media you scan periodically? Less like cake, and more like a 5 Hour Energy; a little hit, then move on.
Readability tools ensure that if all they do is glance at your blog post (because you’re writing blogs all the time now, right?), they’ll be able to easily draw out, and remember, the most important points.
The following readability tools are basic, but extremely important. They could be difference between readers digesting your content, or skipping the meal altogether.
Key Readability Tips
- Use bold type sparingly and only to help key ideas jump out to the reader. Reiterating key ideas and quotes is often done in magazine articles and is just as effective in online content.
- Bullet points are a great way to paraphrase information and draw the reader’s eye to the most important points by pulling them out of the body of your text.
- Enumerations, or listing items by number, is more formal than using bullet points, but is best for ordering ideas or data.
- Italics, like bold type, help to draw the reader’s eye to important ideas. However, they are most effective when used to highlight negative words like not, no, and but which can often be read incorrectly if the content is only being scanned.
Simple tools? Yes.
Essential tools? Heck yes.
Looking for even more writing tips? Or just plain impressed with the readability of this blog post? Come back and read some more.