From the course: Learning to Write for the Web

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Write for an 8th-grade audience

Write for an 8th-grade audience

From the course: Learning to Write for the Web

Start my 1-month free trial

Write for an 8th-grade audience

- You might think that using big words is a great way to impress your audience, but that misses a major point. People don't care to find out how large your vocabulary is. Instead, they just want to read and understand the information that you're providing. Even if people can read at a higher reading level, they find it easier to read simple text. What this means is, you should write for a 5th-grade reading level in your summaries, an 8th-grade in the majority of your content, and a maximum of 11th-grade in accompanying literature. Those grade levels correspond to a reading age of around 11, 14, and 18. This is about the age of children in their last year of grade school, middle school, and high school in the United States. But there are also a lot of individuals who just don't have the skills to read at a high reading level. A US government survey in 2003 found that 14% of US adults are functionally illiterate. And another 29% have only basic reading skills, enough to perform simple…

Contents