http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2023/04/185-wackadoodle-english.html
#185
Blog Post Tuesday, 11 April 2023
Posted
by Denny Hatch
Annie Reneau’s Wackadoodle
New Way to Write English.
"This viral tool could be a game-changer for some."
—Annie Reneau, 03.27.23
Above is a sample of
Bionic Text—a bizzarro new way of presenting the English language that is
supposed to enable mentally challenged readers suffering from Dyslexia and/or ADHD to understand what
they are reading.
Note:
Later in this post I’ll supply the link to the “free text converter”
that you can use to change any text into Annie Reneau's "game-changer."
A YouTube Clip from the company also shows possibilities for how
the font can be adjusted to individual preferences, making more or less
of the
initial letters bolded of the 3.5% of the population who suffer from
ADHD or
the 20% that allegedly has dyslexia.
A Personal Opinion
The
illustration of Bionic Text above is like nothing I have ever seen in my 87
years. It seems to me if a mentally challenged reader gets hooked on this
fringe variation of oddball writing the English language, it could kill the comprehension of normal prose. Ergo: no ability to make sense of books, newspapers, magazines, e-mails, memos, printed instructions or the Internet.
A Famous Victim of Dyslexia
In World War II, my very first boyhood hero was the
dyslexic General George S. Patton, Jr., 1885-1945. Patton’s dyslexia
was so severe he
was forced to repeat his first year at West Point. With horrendous
difficulty he taught himself to read and
write orders in traditional English. In his dash through France Patton’s
Third
Army liberated 82,000 square miles, 1,500 cities and towns and 12,000
inhabited
places. His army killed and wounded a half-million enemy soldiers and
captured 956,000 prisoners.
Praise God he was not dependent on Annie Reneau’s loopy Bionic Text.
It would have rendered him totally unable to read or write normal communications. He never
would have been given command of Third Army.
The War in Europe would have been prolonged for months with hundreds of
thousands more American troops killed and wounded.
Below are 10 basic rules for creating easy-to-read English Language Text in Print or Online.
1.
Three Basic Couplets
“Short Words! Short Sentences!
Short Paragraphs!" —Andrew J. Byrne
2. Optimal Sentence Length (Number
of Words)
Taped to every desk lamp Scott Huch
inherited for 30 years was this faded newspaper clipping:
Text of the above clipping.
Tests have shown that a sentence of eight
words is very easy to read; of 11 words, easy; of 14 words, fairly easy; of 17
words, standard; of 21 words, fairly difficult; of 25 words, difficult; of 29
or more words, very difficult; so this sentence with 54 words, counting numbers,
is ranked impossible.
—Virginia-Pilot
Try to Make Sense of This 132-word Sentence
It is true that the strategic bombing
surveys published by the Allies, together with the records of the Federal
German Statistics Office and other official sources, who that the Royal Air
Force alone dropped a million tons of bombs on enemy territory; it is true that
of the 131 towns and cities attacked, some only one and some repeatedly, many
were almost entirely flattened, that about 600,000 German civilians fell victim
to air raids, and that three and a half million homes were destroyed, while at
the end of the war seven and a half million people were left homeless, and there
were 31.1 cubic meters of rubble for every person in Cologne and 42.8 cubic
meters for every inhabitant of Dresden but we do not grasp what it all actually
meant.
—W.G. Sebald, On the Natural
History of Destruction (Word Count: 132)
(A Personal Aside): When self-editing
if I come across a sentence that seems too long, I do a word count. If it’s 29
words or longer, I break it into separate sentences.
3. Online
Readability: Optimal Line Length (# of characters).
“The optimal line length for your
body text is considered to be 50-60 characters per line, including
spaces (“Typographie”, E. Ruder). Other sources suggest that up to 75
characters is acceptable.
— Christian Holst, Baymard
Institute
4. Serif vs. San Serif
Experts urge
the use of serif type (e.g., Times, Garamond) for copy
in printed material and sans serif (e.g. Verdana,
Helvetica) in digital communications.
5. Avoid Gray walls of type!”
—David Ogilvy
"Nothing is less inviting than a solid page of gray text with nothing to
break it up or catch the eye." —Ed
Elliott
6. Break the Tedium of Type with Crossheads/Mini Headlines
“After two or three inches of copy, insert
your first mini headline [crosshead], and thereafter pepper them throughout.
They keep the reader marching forward.”—David
Ogilvy
“An ingenious sequence of boldly
displayed mini headlines can deliver the substance of your entire pitch to glancers
who are too lazy to wade through the text.” —David Ogilvy
7. Headlines, Teasers and Email Subject Lines
“The headline selects the
reader.”
—Axel Andersson
Is it obvious from the headline who
should read what you have to say?
“On the average, five times as many people
read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline,
you have spent eighty cents out of your advertising dollar.”
—David Ogilvy
“The headline on your ad—and the teaser on your
direct mail envelope—and the subject line of your email—are the hot pants on
the hooker.”
—Bill Jayme
“The writer of this chapter spends
far more time on headlines than on writing. He often spends hours on a single
headline. Often scores of headlines are discarded before the right one is
selected."
—Claude Hopkins
8. Avoid “Blind” Headlines.
"Some headlines are 'blind.' They don't say what the product is, or
what it will do for you. They are about 20 percent below average in
recall."
—David Ogilvy
“Your headline should telegraph what
you want to say—in simple language. Readers do not stop to decipher the
meanings of obscure headlines.”
—David Ogilvy
9. Type
Must Be Readable
“Type smaller than 9-point is difficult for
most people to read.”
—David
Ogilvy
10. Avoid Busy Backgrounds
“Never set your copy in white type on a black
background and never set it over a gray or colored tint. The old school of art
directors believed that these devices forced people to read the copy; we now
know that they make reading physically impossible.”
—David Ogilvy
The Most Unbelievable Newspaper Ad Ever Published
• It was a single full-page black-and-white
newspaper broadsheet advertisement published in The New York Times October
19, 1948.
• With 6450
words jammed onto the page, it was the longest ad in the history of The New
York Times (or any newspaper ever). The record still stands.
• Not a
single photograph, drawing, table, chart or graph was used anywhere to break up
the monotony of black-and-white words, words, words.
• The offer:
a free book from the brokerage company Merrill Lynch.
• It generated over 20,000 requests for the free
book. Over the life of this ad in myriad newspapers, it generated 3 million requests and brought in a ton of new investors to Merrill Lynch.
• Here's a link to the Denny Hatch blog post that analyzes this amazing newspaper ad:
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2019/04/53-worlds-greatest-financial-services.html
To
Follow Up on Annie Reneau’s Bionic Text
Dealing
with Dyslexia/ADHD, Here’s the Link.
https://www.upworthy.com/bionic-reading-could-be-a-game-changer-rp2
To Turn Normal English
Prose into Bionic Text,
Here’s the Link to the Free Text Converter
https://app.bionic-reading.com
And Finally… Annie Reneau’s CV
Takeaway to Consider - Meet Bo Sacks
Personal Note: A perpetual delight
for me are the weekly emails of “Media Intelligence™ Heard on the Web’’ by Bo (Bob) Sacks.
Bo is the ultimate Media Maven who reads everything in the fields of marketing,
advertising, PR and communications and brings the best of the best — news stories, articles,
provocative opinions, breakthroughs, screw-ups and glorious gossip — to my
inbox during the week via “America’s
Oldest e-newsletter est. 1993.”
Bo’s wonderfully quirky
Manifesto:
"The Industry that Vents Together Stays Together."
Responses to all Articles and Bo-Rants are greatly encouraged and may
be included in " BoSacks Readers Speak Out"
All
news items and the various opinions expressed in this newsletter are not
necessarily the opinion of, nor in agreement with the opinions of BoSacks. They
are just interesting thoughts and other opinions that BoSacks thinks you should
know about. After all, as the Japanese proverb goes: "If you believe everything
you read, perhaps you better not read."
It was a Bo Sacks’ e-newsletter
two weeks ago that introduced me to Annie Reneau. I urge you to write Bo Sacks and get his free
e-newsletter. Whether you agree or disagree, Bo is a delicious diversion —a font
of information and valuable ideas.
https://www.bosacks.com
bo@bosacks.com
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