Understand Your Buyer > How People Work > Average Reading Age

What is it?

The average reading age of an adult in the UK is 9 years of age – we need to be mindful of this in our written communications.

 

Why does it work?

If you fail to recognise that your written communications might be too sophisticated for your audience then you risk alienating them. To seize and keep attention requires the use of simpler language and concepts to maximise your chance of success.

 

How can you use it?

There are tools to measure the reading age of your writing such as the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score which looks at the number of words and syllables in each sentence.

 

In case you were wondering, this page meets that standard 🙂

 

 

Example

The book “Gangster Granny” by David Walliams is written for 7-10 year olds. Notice in this small excerpt how many single syllable words there are and the simplicity of the overall structure and language…

 

See also

• Attention Span
• Cognitive Load

 

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