Last September I wrote about a report that showed efficient writing can save money for businesses. Obviously, the second part of that is reading…

So as well as writing efficiently and avoiding unnecessary words, you can save money by making it easier for people to read the words.

Making reading easier

You may want to get all your team to do a speed reading course, but I think there are probably better ways to help people read your business materials 🙂

So here are some simple to implement tips for making documents easier to read:

1. split long paragraphs into shorter ones whenever possible – long chunks of text are harder to read and absorb, plus they look more intimidating
2. keep decent margins on the page so the text is not overwhelming
3. be generous with headings and subheadings – not only do they make the text easier to digest, they make the page more visually appealing
4. use the layout and images to make the page inviting – the same information will be read more if it looks interesting and easy to read
5. work to avoid paragraphs and lists being divided across pages – it is distracting to turn a page part way through a sentence or idea

Thinking about documents you find easy to read, what features do you find helpful?

If you haven’t thought much about the look of your writing, why not try adjusting the appearance of a page of your existing text and see if you can see a difference – or test different looks on different people. I’d love to hear your results!