{"id":16384,"date":"2020-11-22T15:00:32","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/?p=16384"},"modified":"2020-11-26T10:24:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T09:24:52","slug":"wordpress-readability-score","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wordpress-readability-score\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Post Readability Score and How to Improve Yours in WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]How do you get a person to read your content? You can\u2019t make them do it. It wouldn\u2019t make sense to pay them, but it\u2019s a good idea to make it so that there\u2019s something in it for them. The currently prevalent paradigm calls that something \u201cvalue,\u201d purposefully leaving the term vague. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]You could also turn the problem on its head and start asking yourself why people <em>aren\u2019t<\/em> reading your content, identifying those obstacles, and removing them. Lack of value would be an obstacle, sure \u2013 they don\u2019t read it because there\u2019s nothing in it for them. But findability would be an obstacle, too, so we have SEO to help us understand and tackle that.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]As you work down the list of obstacles, you\u2019d come across post readability soon. Reading a post shouldn\u2019t be hard work. To understand what makes your post difficult to read, we often rely on readability scores to show us where our writing goes against us. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]In this post, we\u2019ll unpack for you:[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;22px&#8221;]<ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\"><a href=\"#what-is-readability\">What Is Readability<\/a><\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;5px&#8221;]<ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\"><a href=\"#what-are-readability-scores\">What Are Readability Scores<\/a><\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;5px&#8221;]<ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\"><a href=\"#which-readability-scores-should-you-use\">Which Readability Scores Should You Use<\/a><\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;5px&#8221;]<ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\"><a href=\"#how-to-make-your-posts-read-better\">How to Make Your Posts Read Better<\/a><\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;68px&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"qodef-h4\"><a id=\"what-is-readability\"><\/a>What Is Readability?<\/h2>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;24px&#8221;]<div class=\"qodef-single-image-holder    \">\n    <div class=\"qodef-si-inner\" >\n                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"401\" src=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-Is-Readability.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"What Is Readability\" srcset=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-Is-Readability.jpg 700w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-Is-Readability-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-Is-Readability-620x355.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/>                        <\/div>\n<\/div>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;38px&#8221;][vc_column_text]Let\u2019s start with the most obvious explanation of readability \u2013 it\u2019s how easily people read a text. It\u2019s a property of everything you write, and you know instinctively that there are some things you can do to make it easier to read your text. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]<strong>You can, for example, use simple, short sentences with orthodox structures.<\/strong> Relying on shorter, more commonly used words is a good choice, too. A couple of changes along these lines and you\u2019ll make it much easier for people to read your text.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]But we can\u2019t forget that we\u2019re talking about post readability here. It\u2019s about web content, and it has some readability rules of its own. <strong>For one, people rarely actually read it \u2014 they usually just scan it.<\/strong> They read sentences and keywords and let their eyes be attracted to different elements.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]In that sense, the readability of your content boils down to how well you structured it so that it lets people scan it easily \u2014<strong> or maybe decide to read through the whole thing if you\u2019ve done your job very, very well. <\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]It\u2019s at that point that the original sense of readability becomes relevant. As does spelling, and that\u2019s something we haven\u2019t mentioned yet. For now, you must understand that, <strong>when it comes to the content on your website, readability might not be so straightforward as it might seem. <\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;80px&#8221;][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=&#8221;blog-magazine-banner&#8221;][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;81px&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"qodef-h4\"><a id=\"what-are-readability-scores\"><\/a>What Are Readability Scores?<\/h2>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;24px&#8221;]<div class=\"qodef-single-image-holder    \">\n    <div class=\"qodef-si-inner\" >\n                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"401\" src=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-are-Readability-Scores.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"What are Readability Scores\" srcset=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-are-Readability-Scores.jpg 700w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-are-Readability-Scores-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/What-are-Readability-Scores-620x355.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/>                        <\/div>\n<\/div>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;38px&#8221;][vc_column_text]One way you can tackle the problem of readability would be to assign it a score. Rudolf Flesch, an Austrian-American readability expert, devised the Flesch reading ease evaluation, <strong>which gave the text a readability score between 0 and 100 based on the following formula: <\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]206.835 \u2013 1.015 (total words\/total sentences) \u2013 84.6 (total syllables\/total words)[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]Now, luckily for us, we have handy online calculators we can use to calculate the score for our texts. <strong>It\u2019s important to notice, however, that the metrics this score uses are sentence and word length<\/strong>. The higher the score, the easier it is to read the text. It\u2019s also more likely that it uses shorter sentences with shorter words. <strong>Plain English has a Flesch reading ease score between 70 and 60<\/strong>.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]Another popular metric for determining readability is the Flesh-Kincaid reading grade level score.<strong> It assigns the text a level of education a US student would need to understand the text<\/strong>. The formula for it goes like this:[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]0.39(total words\/total sentences) + 11.8 (total syllables\/total words) \u2013 15.59[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]<strong>This score also deals with sentence and word length.<\/strong> It\u2019s somewhat inversely correlated with the reading ease score, as a higher ease score generally means a lower school grade requirement from the reader.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]These are the two most popular readability scores you could use. One could argue they are what people think of when you say \u201creadability score\u201d because they\u2019ve been so much in use.<strong> But they\u2019re not the only scores of these types, and they might not be the only score you\u2019d want to use to judge the readability of your WordPress posts.<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;68px&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"qodef-h4\"><a id=\"which-readability-scores-should-you-use\"><\/a>Which Readability Scores Should You Use?<\/h2>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The problem with Flesch-Kinkaid and similar readability scores is that, on their own, they don\u2019t give you everything you need to improve the readability of your content. You could chain hundreds of short sentences containing short words into a block of text that would be incredibly hard to read. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]That\u2019s why, when writing for the web, you might want to rely on different kinds of readability tools that may or may not give you an actual score. Grammarly, a <a href=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/best-grammar-checker-tools\/\">popular grammar checking tool<\/a>, has a score of its own. <strong>When writing in the Grammarly Editor, the tool takes into account the clarity, correctness, engagement, and delivery to make up a Performance Score that will tell you something about your content\u2019s readability. <\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;50px&#8221;]<div class=\"qodef-single-image-holder   qodef-has-border \">\n    <div class=\"qodef-si-inner\" >\n                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Readability-Score.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Readability Score\" srcset=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Readability-Score.jpg 700w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Readability-Score-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Readability-Score-620x331.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/>                        <\/div>\n<\/div>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;38px&#8221;][vc_column_text]The one tool that\u2019s great at showing what makes your content readable is the popular and <a href=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/guide-to-set-up-yoast-plugin\/\">easy-to-set-up<\/a> plugin Yoast SEO. It will judge your content by the Flesch reading ease score. <strong>It will also check the use of passive voice, sentence variety, paragraph lengths, and transition words. <\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;50px&#8221;]<div class=\"qodef-single-image-holder   qodef-has-border \">\n    <div class=\"qodef-si-inner\" >\n                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Yoast-SEO-Readability.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Yoast SEO Readability\" srcset=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Yoast-SEO-Readability.jpg 700w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Yoast-SEO-Readability-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Yoast-SEO-Readability-620x331.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/>                        <\/div>\n<\/div>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;38px&#8221;][vc_column_text]That\u2019s not even the whole list of markers it follows to gauge the readability of your text. <strong>Yoast SEO might not give you a score, but it will tell you what you need to do to make your content more readable.<\/strong> Some of its advice will overlap with the Flesch-Kinkaid approach, and even more with Grammarly\u2019s Performance Score. But that\u2019s not a bad thing.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;68px&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"qodef-h4\"><a id=\"how-to-make-your-posts-read-better\"><\/a>How to Make Your Posts Read Better<\/h2>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;24px&#8221;]<div class=\"qodef-single-image-holder    \">\n    <div class=\"qodef-si-inner\" >\n                                    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"401\" src=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/How-to-Make-Your-Posts-Read-Better.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"How to Make Your Posts Read Better\" srcset=\"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/How-to-Make-Your-Posts-Read-Better.jpg 700w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/How-to-Make-Your-Posts-Read-Better-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/How-to-Make-Your-Posts-Read-Better-620x355.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/>                        <\/div>\n<\/div>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;38px&#8221;][vc_column_text]The easiest way to make your posts read better \u2013 or be more readable, or have a better readability score, would be to install the Yoast SEO plugin and do what it tells you. It can be as easy as that. But it could be even better if you learned not to rely on it completely \u2014 it could save you lots of time in rewriting and editing. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]<strong>Here are a couple of things you might do to improve the readability of your posts:<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;22px&#8221;]<ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Use elements to break up the text \u2013 images, bullet-point lists, subheadings. <\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Learn about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/inverted-pyramid\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">inverted pyramid<\/a>. Journalists have been using it for years; it\u2019s especially useful for taking advantage of how people scan texts.<\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Don\u2019t introduce more than one idea per paragraph. <\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Keep your paragraphs reasonably short. Aim for three to four sentences \u2014 the least you need to develop an idea. <\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Don\u2019t follow the short sentence\/short word paradigm blindly. It drains the content of its dynamics. <\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Hunt down typos diligently and mercilessly, or, better yet, have someone else do it for you.<\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul><ul class=\"qodef-unordered-list-item qodef-toc\">\n    <li>\n\t        <div class=\"qodef-ul-title-holder\">\n            <span class=\"qodef-ul-title-content\">Be concise, write in a scannable layout, and use neutral language. <\/span>        <\/div>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>[vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]There\u2019s plenty you can do to improve your content\u2019s readability as you can see. Try to work it into your writing style one by one and soon you won\u2019t have to rely too much on Yoast SEO or Grammarly for their valuations. [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;68px&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"qodef-h4\">Let\u2019s Wrap It Up!<\/h2>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]There\u2019s no doubt that, among the many things your content has to be, \u201creadable\u201d is an incredibly important trait. If it were in a race with other characteristics of content, it might be fighting for the first place with \u201cvaluable.\u201d [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;28px&#8221;][vc_column_text]Readability, however, is a complex term, especially when we\u2019re talking about the readability of WordPress posts. In that sense, the readability of your post and the score you assign to it might only show you a snippet of the whole picture of how readers interact with it. So, while it surely is important to consider the readability score of your WordPress posts, other factors should get their due in attention, too.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the readability score of your WordPress posts not what you want it to be? We&#8217;ll teach you a thing or two about readability and how you can improve it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9295,"featured_media":16466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[46,4,13],"class_list":["post-16384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials","tag-blogging","tag-tips","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qodeinteractive.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}