2 Easy Ways for Advisors to Be More Persuasive

2. Constantly improve your writing, and strive to write like you talk.

When you talk, you use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. Make most sentences active, not passive, voice.

You would never say, “Reclining on the floor covering is a felix domesticus.” You would say, “The cat is on the mat.” If you wouldn’t say it, don’t write it either.

You can actually calculate “readability” with a little program hidden in Microsoft Word. The feature is called “Readability Statistics.” You just need to turn on the feature. It then runs automatically when you spell check.

In Microsoft Word, choose File-Options-Proofing.  Then choose “Show Readability Statistics.” With this change made, select some text in a Word doc. Choose F7 to do the usual spell check. 

Now for the good part. Up pops your “Readability Statistics.”

The stats I pay attention to are:

• Sentences per paragraph: I want four or less.
   
• Words per sentence: I try to keep my own writing at about 14.
   
• Flesch Reading Ease Score (out of 100). I like to be not too far from 80%.
   
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. This indicates how many years of education someone needs to read your document. I like my score to be about 8, as in eighth grade.  You heard that right. I do not want people to struggle with anything I write. 
   
• If my “grade level” score is higher than 8, I will go back through the article paragraph by paragraph looking for big words, long sentences, and long paragraphs. 

Those are the elements that make for complication, which reduces readability and which reduces your ability to persuade.

Here’s my score on this article:

Sentences per paragraph: 2.3
Words per sentence: 9.6
Passive Sentences: 0%
Flesch Reading Ease: 75.7%
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 5.0

Did I persuade you at least to try Readability Statistics?