In this blog, Is Science A Second Language? I quoted Gwen Pearson, an entomologist.
Pearson acknowledges that it’s the scientists’ job to translate scientific messages into compelling, relatable material. I, of course, agree, which is why I started this blog, to give scientists the tools to do so.
One of the first methods we use to accomplish this is to look at the “readability” of any of our communications. This refers to the grade equivalent of the written message (and applies even to a script if the message is spoken). For our purposes, I’ll just use the term “writing” even though you may be doing oral, in-person or video presentations.
Regarding public communication, writing for the “average” person is better and reaches more people. What is “average” in this case? It depends on your audience, but a good role of thumb is to aim to have a “readability” of 8th-10th grade.
Why? Because that’s the reading level of the average college graduate.1
Readability is the basis of most reading literacy tests. At the scientific societies where I work, all our blogs and news stories are written at the 8th-10th grade readability level. The same is true for public content on our websites.
This strategy is working: Year-over-year viewer statistics show that more people are reading our blogs and our web pages than ever, and those values continue to increase. (One blog has an average of 35,000 readers per month, and one is over 10,000 – in the blogging world, these are great statistics!)
Remember: people are reading blogs and websites, watching videos, or perhaps coming to your field days as part of their “infotainment.” Yes, they are looking for information, but they are, for the most part, off the clock. This is their leisure time.
If they have taken the time to come to us for information, we need to present it to them in the most relatable way possible. And a person’s top literacy level is when they are at their best. If they are tired, or hungry, or distracted – and who isn’t – their literacy goes down. Most likely, within people’s professional fields they read at higher levels, but usually not outside their field.
One of the biggest barriers to communicating in average terms is the use of jargon, which you read a lot about in these blog posts.
The second culprit is sentence length. This pertains most to our written communications, but it has applications in oral (and video) communications, too.
Readers rely on periods, and listeners rely on pauses. Pauses are the oral equivalent of periods. Both communications tools give the eyes and ears – and brains – a break. Commas, semi-colons, and other punctuation do not have the same effect as periods.
Numbers also increase reading levels in our public communications. Why? When you see or hear a number, that affects a different part of your brain. Words and numbers are different brain languages. Here are two examples:
- In a recent study, yield increased on 70% of the 1,000 acres.
- In a recent study, yield increased on seventy percent of the thousand acres planted.
Just a simple change in writing out the numbers into the English language equivalent reduces the reading level into the appropriate range. When spoken, allowing for a pause when giving numbers, graphics, and repeating them helps.
Our work involves numbers, so this is an important change. You can’t help the presentation style when speaking out loud – the pause helps. Graphics should be simple and support your written communications – something like a pie chart might be a good representation of the above statistic. If you are presenting to the public and speaking this sentence, give them a long pause to let those numbers sink in. If you have a PowerPoint, use your graphic on the slide.
Another thought about numbers: in presenting to the public, do we need to use them? Sometimes, yes. But other times using terms like “the majority of our acres increased yields” would be enough information and removes the need to use a number. Or: we doubled the yield of the chemical we need by changing the temperature just five degrees. These are not research presentations to your peers who need to replicate your methods; this is merely informative, so the public knows that science is important.
Lastly, acronyms. Yes, it’s painstaking to write out (or speak out loud) “best management practice,” chemical formulas (CO2 versus carbon dioxide), or any of the thousands of acronyms I’ve seen in our sciences. Yes, I have heard scientists say to the public C-O-TWO. Acronyms work great when communicating with your peers; to the public, they can cause confusion. And that’s not the goal of science communications.
There are readability tools in Microsoft Word that can help you as you plan out your communications. (Google “How to get a readability score in Word.” My preferred is Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level Test.) Word can also check to make sure you are using inclusive language in your writing!
On your first draft, you’ll probably find that your sentences are long, and your draft is a higher reading level – I’ve seen first drafts of 25th grade level! I don’t think our peers want to read 40-word sentences, but that’s a guess. I’m positive that the public doesn’t want to. The best average sentence length is fifteen words/sentence. When Word gives your readability score it also gives you average sentence length. If your readability level is high, most likely your sentences are long, and you’re not using enough paragraph breaks. Jargon hurts too.
Taking the step of determining readability helps you see what you need to fix to make your material more understandable to a broader audience.
You can also use this website if you’re using other writing tools: https://readable.com/. This service used to be free, but as of April 15, 2021, it is behind a firewall (payment needed). A quick Google search found this tool which looks very HTML/DOS looking, but does give you a score: https://readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php
Grammarly doesn’t offer readability scores either (same date) and only basic functions are available without a subscription. (If you know of other tools – please share in the comments!)
In order to determine your readability score, you’ve got to plan your public communications. Many of us are so familiar with our work that we assume we can just do presentations on-the-fly. But I suggest to all those who want to the public to really understand the value of your work that you plan out your communications. Write it down. Run it through the readability tools that are available to make sure that you’re making your audiences’ job as easy as possible.
Read these other blogs about writing and scripting:
Written by Susan V. Fisk, BS(Chem), M.Ed., MBA. Copyright at publication by author.
Relatable Science 
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