Issue #11 —Wednesday, June 19, 2018
Posted by Denny Hatch
Writers! 19 Simple Rules for Creating READABLE Copy
Why a Majority of People Can't Read What You Write!
1. “The addictive nature of Web browsing can leave you
with an attention span
of 9 seconds—the same as a goldfish.”
—Dr. Ted Selker, MIT
Media Lab
2. “Currently 45 million Americans are functionally
illiterate and cannot read above a fifth grade level.” —Literacy Project Foundation
3. “50% of adults cannot read a book written
at an eighth grade level.” —Literacy
Project Foundation
4. “Lookers are shoppers. Readers are
buyers. Engage your prospect through reading and you’re
on your way to a sale.”
—Malcolm Decker,
Freelancer
5. Communications coins of the
realm today
are:
• The 160-character text (81% of Americans text regularly according to Pew Research).
• The 160-character text (81% of Americans text regularly according to Pew Research).
• The 280 character tweet, employed by 336
million active Twitter users who send 500million tweets a day.
6. People will read your copy only
if it is broken up into bite-sized paragraphs à la Tweets and texts.
7. “Avoid gray walls of type.” —David Ogilvy,
Advertising legend
Atlantic
NY Times
Magazine
New Yorker
8. “Neatness rejects involvement.” —Lew Smith,
Agency EVP
9. It is imperative to keep the reader’s eye
moving.
10. “Ugly works!” —Seattle
Marketing guru Bob Hacker
A conspicuously ugly ad by Fred
Breismeister, Greystone Press. Note the hand holding the bottom of the book.
Fingers move the eye up to the “FREE” arrow and burst: “Yes… Take it FREE!”
Ugly stuff. But these devices giddily move the eye around. In the last
century, Greystone sold gazillions of books!
11. "An ingenious sequence of boldly displayed
crossheds (mini-headlines) can deliver the substance of your entire pitch to
glancers who are too lazy to wade through the text." —David Ogilvy
(Note Breismeister's cross-heds/mini-headlines breaking up the two bottom left columns above.)
12. "After two or three inches of copy insert your first boldface crosshead—or mini-headline/sub-hed—and thereafter pepper mini-headlines throughout. These mini-headlines should be the same size and font as text, but centered—either underlined or in boldface."
—David Ogilvy
14. “Type smaller than 9-point is difficult for most people to read.”
—David Ogilvy
15. “Never use text reversed out of a dark
color or a busy background.” —Ed Elliott, Designer
16. Online readability means line
widths should be 50 to 75 characters including spaces. —Christian
Holst, Baymard Institute
17. Use black type—never gray or pastels in text or headlines.
18. No sentence longer than 28 words—ever!
17. Use black type—never gray or pastels in text or headlines.
18. No sentence longer than 28 words—ever!
19. Short words! Short sentences! Short paragraphs!
—Andrew J.
Byrne, Freelancer
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