Page 176 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

Genius! That scores 38.4 percent on the Flesch Reading Ease
test. Put it this way, that’s harder to understand than the Harvard
Business Review, a publication with which I feel sure the said patrons
were unfamiliar. My question to the author is, do you really imagine
that a group of “revelers,” staggering noisily from a service station
kiosk at midnight, are going to read a sign written like that, let alone
figure out what the hell it means?
My translation would be something like,

Please be quiet when you leave—don’t wake our neighbors.
[FRE score: 100 percent.]
In more obviously commercial arenas I still see plenty of examples
of this long-winded style, where every big event is a significant
development, and long-term plans are always strategic roadmaps. It
makes no sense, literally, to dress up perfectly ordinary sentiments
in Sunday best. And remember that everybody can understand
Plain English, whatever their level of literacy or intellectual
sophistication.

In practice

• Make sure, when you start writing, that you are using the sort

of language you’d use if you were talking to your reader face
to face.

• Read what you’ve written out loud. If you sound like a lawyer

talking, you need to simplify it.

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