It’s a $37 million problem a year at one organization
Bad writing causes 40% of the cost of managing business transactions, writes William H. DuBay, a readability expert at Impact Information, in Working with Plain Language (PDF).
He cites:
- Newsletters that reach only a fraction of the targeted audience
- Press releases that never make the news
- Websites that fail to inform and motivate readers to act
- Forms and applications that are badly filled in or left incomplete
- Memos and business letters that require endless clarification
- Legal notices and procedures that no one can read
How much is bad writing costing your organization?
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Are you missing 97% of your audience?
Reach more readers with simple readability tweaks
“The problem with communication,” said George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”
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.
At Cut Through the Clutter — our two-day concise-writing master class on 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. (Prepare to be depressed!)
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.
Save $100 when you register by May 17.
This is the only concise media-writing workshop we’ve scheduled for 2017. Don’t miss out. Register now.
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Polish your skills at these Master Classes
Learn to Master the Art of the Storyteller, Catch Your Readers, Get Clicked, Cut Through the Clutter and more
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