Readability

[Mad Swede]

I'm not sure an editor is much help for readability. My editor (and others I've met) hasn't attempted to change my style, and she doesn't do any detailed analysis of readability. As she says, the way we as authors write, the way we structure our sentences, the way we phrase things, these are all part of our style and shouldn't be changed unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Well, "readability" is a junk statistic for the curious, it's fun to look at once or twice, but then? Meh. Outside of certain areas such as academia, or making sure your pulp fiction doesn't read at a graduate level, it's pretty pointless. Hell, I'm pretty sure someone had an app that would insert big-assed words that mean nothing just to pump up the grade level, heh heh. How stupid is that? But, I was speaking in more general terms than "readability". Passives, pacing, commas that shift meaning, and that ilk. Those are the real readability.

Editors used to be far more hands-on than they are now, same with agents I think, but these days there are so damned many writers out there that they don't need to be. And of course, they have that philosophical opinion as a fallback. But, there are an awful lot of books out there that have been edited but really needed to be EDITED. Can bad writing be a style? Well, it sure worked for 50 Shades of Crap. But in general, it's not a good idea. The best editors know how to help refine style, and IMO, this is something pretty much every writer could use at some juncture.

I spent a good chunk of money on a good editor and outside of the basics, she said "you know what? You do this alot." And I said, crap, I do. So I changed it up and it strengthened my writing. Was it a world changer? No. But it refined my voice in a way I may not have otherwise done

 

[skip.knox]

I have scorned readibility scores for a long time now. Once upon a time--in the mid-1990s--I taught college history courses online. I put every lecture up, rewritten as sequenced web pages, not the bundling of Powerpoint slides or, worse, videos of me lecturing. Each essay was 20 to 50 web pages long, written for my college audience. In other words, the voice and diction was roughly what I would have used in the classroom--call it academic casual.

Over the years I regularly got emails from both students and teachers at the high school and even at the middle school level. They thanked me for the essays, but what's relevant here is that they often complimented me on how readable and easy to understand were these essays. This surprised me. I wasn't writing for them. I have no idea what the readability scores were, but I didn't care. Write clearly: that was ever my only guide and standard, pounded into me by multiple history professors (none of whom were professors of multiple history).

In short, I acquired the same attitude as I've had toward other such measures. They are an abstraction. At best, they might tell us something statistical. It is a disease peculiar to the modern mind that assumes statistical and meaningful are synonyms. Plenty of people could read my essays and learn something from it. That is sufficient. What more could Fletcher or his crony Kincaid have to offer?

 

[The Dark One]

Just on the topic of editors - my editor at my new publisher has impressed me greatly.

I'm a fairly experienced author now and edit as I go, so knew I'd handed in a pretty clean ms. Therefore I was a little worried when the publisher told me he had a fresh young intern, raring to go. In my experience, fresh editors have a need to show their worth and training - which means they rewrite the whole book from the ground up. So painful.

This new editor though... left alone everything I would call my style - just pointed out a few overused words, changed some overly passive language to active, asked a few perceptive questions and made a small number of valid suggestions. Some of which I used.

I was absolutely delighted with her work, then devastated to learn she's already been headhunted by a bigger publisher and moved on.

The cream always rises...