Lessons for Advisors From Indecipherable DOL Fiduciary Rule

Testing Your Own Reading Ease

My recommendation: Test the readability of every document you produce.

Here are the instructions to turn on the Readability Statistic in your copy of Word and Outlook in Office 2007. I made a slight modification to accommodate for Word 2013 which is what I use.

Outlook

On the Tools menu, click Options.

1. Click the Spelling tab, and then click Spelling and AutoCorrection.
2. Click Proofing.
3. Under ‘When correcting grammar in Outlook,’ select the ‘Check grammar with spelling check’ box.
4. Select the Show readability statistics check box.

After you enable this feature, open a file that you want to check, and check the spelling. When Outlook or Word finishes checking the spelling and grammar, it displays information about the reading level of the document.

Word

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options. In Word 2013, File–>Save>Options.
2. Click Proofing.
3. Make sure ‘Check grammar with spelling’ is selected.
4. Under ‘When correcting grammar in Word,’ select the ‘Show readability statistics’ check box.

According to Wikipedia, Reading Ease scores of 90-100 represent a reading level that is good for fifth graders and have text that is very easy to read; 60-70 means you have written in plain English, which can be easily understood even by teenagers.

From 0 to 60, text is considered fairly difficult to very difficult to read.

My published writing never has a reading ease of less than 60 or a grade level more than 8.

When a final readability check is out of bounds, I will sometimes select a paragraph at a time and run Readability. When I have simplified the offending paragraphs, the document as a whole passes the test.

Here are my Readability Statistics for this article: Flesh Reading Ease 64.2; Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level of 6.8.

A couple of other points: Write short paragraphs. Write short sentences. I strive for 14 words or less. Allow few, if any, passive sentences.