Read your copy aloud

When Don Murray arrived in the newsroom for his first day on the job as writing coach for the Boston Globe, he turned to his new boss and said: “I can tell you who your three best writers are.”

Conduct a sound check — **Conversation piece** Make sure your message sounds as human as you do. *Image by Flood G.*

Then the Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work proceeded to do just that.

“How did you know?” the editor asked.

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Write for Readability

Reach readers, improve communication — even boost the bottom line — by making your messages more readable

“The problem with communication,” said George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

**Get your message across** Write easy-to-read messages that get more people to read your piece, read more of it, read it faster, understand it better and remember it longer. *Image by Lenna Young Andrews*

No kidding. Send out a message that’s written at the 11th grade level, for instance, and 97% of U.S. adults won’t be able to understand it, according to the Department of Education’s latest adult literacy test.

Mission: Not accomplished.

At Cut Through the Clutter — our two-day writing master class on April 6-7 in Washington D.C., and Aug. 17-18 in San Francisco — you’ll dive into the results of this massive worldwide literacy study to get a reality check on the level at which your readers really read.

Then you’ll find out how to write easy-to-read messages that get more people to read your piece, read more of it, read it faster, understand it better and remember it longer.

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

Write at a reading level that really reaches readers. Chances are, you’re vastly overestimating your audience members’ literacy rate, according to a massive international study.
Plan your communications for special audience challenges. Older people, health care consumers, mobile users — maybe even your CEO — may need more help than you realize.
Sell your boss on the bottom-line business value of making messages more readable. (The U.S. Navy, for instance, saved more than $27 million in officer time by increasing readability.)
Increase reading by up to 75% by making one change to your message.
Measure, monitor, manage and report readability — your No. 1 tool for making your messages more effective.

This is the only writing workshop we have planned in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Don’t miss out on your chance to Cut Through the Clutter in D.C.! Register now.