#185 Wackadoodle English

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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