How to use a readability checker to improve your web content

Do you use a readability checker to help you make your content easier to read?

I do, and I often advise others to do the same. My favourite is the Hemingway App. It’s free and quick to use.

But, like all tools, you have to use them in the right way.

Readability tools don’t measure understanding

I recently read a post by Caroline Jarrett and Ginny Redish which emphasised that we have to be careful with readability tools.

Read their post: Readability Formulas: 7 Reasons to Avoid Them and What to Do Instead.

The post reminded me that readability checkers can’t tell you if someone will actually understand your content.

We should also beware of the scores these checkers give us.

For example, I tested some content with Hemingway and The Writer. They gave different results. So the scores aren’t totally reliable.

But personally, I do find these tools useful. You just have to understand their limitations.

Don’t insist on a readability score

I’ve heard of content agencies that insist their writers only submit pieces that get a certain score on Hemingway.

This is absurd. It encourages writers to do arbitrary things to improve the score, rather than creating content that helps readers.

(It turns out you can improve your Hemingway score by adding very. Short. Sentences. Like this. But obviously this is making your content worse.)

How I recommend using readability checkers

So here’s how I use readability checkers when I’m doing a heavy edit. (A light edit wouldn’t involve this level of intervention.)

First inspection

Run the text through Hemingway to get a sense of the scope of the work needed.

The score suggests how much it needs to improve.

The colour-coded issues show what the main problems might be.

Edit in word processor

Edit the text, not in Hemingway but in Word, Google Docs or whatever tool you’re using for the job.

I find it best not to refer to Hemingway at this stage. I edit based on my own judgment of what would make the content clearer and easier to read.

Often this involves going through the text several times.

Check in Hemingway

Once you think you’ve improved the text somewhat, paste it back into Hemingway. Compare the original score with the new score – has it improved?

Look at the main issues flagged now. There may be some easily fixable passive voice or redundant language.

But the real meat of the work now is likely to be with sentence length. This takes a bit longer to address because you can’t just arbitrarily break a sentence into two. You might have to rephrase it or break it into bullets.

Back-and-forth tweaking

I would do any tweaking needed in Word/Google Docs rather than in Hemingway. So this stage involves a bit of back-and-forth – tweaking in Word, pasting into Hemingway.

This stage also involves quite a bit of judgment. You might try to break up a long sentence then conclude that the original was better.

This is precisely what we mean when we say readability checkers are blunt tools. They can flag possible issues, but a human editor is the best judge of what to change and what to leave alone.

Don’t aim for a specific score here. If you get fixated on the score, you’ll do silly things that make the content worse. Like creating stilted sentences or removing words that clarify meaning.

Use the tool as a guide, but you’re the editor – not Hemingway.

Other editing tasks

After that, go back to your word processor and forget about Hemingway!

There are lots editing tasks Hemingway can’t help with: editorial style, spelling, punctuation etc.

There are other tools for these things. But that’s for another post.