Readability Tool Success and Mobile Posting Fail
First, something helpful…
This came to mind when, during a class last week at the conference, someone mentioned reading level and being appropriate for your audience (specifically children in a certain age range).
Did you know you can paste your text into an online tool that will test your document’s readability? Check it out here, with many thanks to an editor of mine who shared it with me about a year ago. The same editor also shared this website with me, and it explains fluency and reading levels in more detail.
You might wonder what that has to do with blogging, and I’ll tell you: in my world, everything has to do with blogging. 🙂 The truth, though, is that we can easily write over our audience’s heads without much thought, especially when we’re talking faith and theology and stuff that’s technical.
There’s also the fact that I have found myself writing for children (my current title is one example), though I never intended to be a children’s writer. (God has a sense of humor, after all.)
Second, a frustration that could have been cool…
There’s an option for mobile posting on Blogger (which is what we use right now for the CWG blog). I enabled it, entered my mobile number, and took the 20 minutes to type out a post on my phone’s teeny-tiny screen last Friday afternoon.
Turns out, it doesn’t quite work, at least not with my (non smart) phone. Oh well…it would have been SO COOL to be able to share things on-the-go via texting. It’s not to be (and it’s probably just as well…for you!).
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Sarah Reinhard is the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families. You’ll find more of Sarah at her blog, SnoringScholar.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.
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Sarah–thanks for posting the "readability" link. Nice tool to have available.
It's a little off-topic, but today my son came home and reported that his history teacher likes to use big words, and that the kids have started writing the ones they don't know to look them up later. They are making a contest of it. I asked him how many he he didn't understand. He said, "none." It was a Proud Momma moment.
Larry, you are welcome. 🙂
Karina, AWESOME! 🙂