Write Website Copy at a Grade 9 Reading Level

Why Grade 9 and Not Lower or Higher

Grade 9 is not about how smart your readers are. It is about how much attention they have to spare. A customer on a phone, in a parking lot, with a check engine light on, reads the way a tired person reads. Short lines. Common words. One idea at a time.

Smart readers do not mind plain copy. They finish it faster. Tired readers cannot use hard copy at all. So plain copy loses no one and hard copy loses the people in a hurry, who are often the ones ready to buy.

Lower than grade 5 or so, copy starts to sound like it talks down. Around grade 6 to 9 is the sweet spot for a service business. That leaves room for a few trade words when you need them.

Measure Only the Prose Inside Main

Most reading tools score the whole page. That gives you a wrong number. A menu is a list of short labels with no periods. The tool reads it as one giant sentence, and your score jumps. A footer full of links and legal text does the same. Code blocks are worse.

So measure only what a person reads as prose. On a well built page, that is the text inside the main element. Leave out the header, the nav, the footer, any code, and any button labels. What is left is the copy you actually wrote.

Make sure list items and headings end cleanly too. A list of five items with no periods reads to the formula as one long sentence. If your lists are full sentences, end each with a period. If they are short labels, that is fine, but know they will push the score up a little.

The Formula and a Small Python Function

The Flesch-Kincaid grade level uses two numbers. The average words per sentence, and the average syllables per word.

grade = 0.39 times words per sentence, plus 11.8 times syllables per word, minus 15.59

Look at the weights. Sentence length is multiplied by 0.39. Syllables per word are multiplied by 11.8, but that average barely moves. So in practice, long sentences drive most of a bad score. Cutting one forty word sentence into four short ones does more than swapping ten long words.

Here is a small function that pulls the text out of main and scores it. It uses only the Python standard library. The syllable count is a simple guess based on vowel groups, which is close enough to compare drafts.

import re
from html.parser import HTMLParser

SKIP = {'nav', 'header', 'footer', 'pre', 'code', 'button', 'script', 'style'}


class MainText(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.in_main = 0
        self.skip = 0
        self.parts = []

    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag == 'main':
            self.in_main += 1
        elif tag in SKIP:
            self.skip += 1

    def handle_endtag(self, tag):
        if tag == 'main':
            self.in_main -= 1
        elif tag in SKIP:
            self.skip -= 1

    def handle_data(self, data):
        if self.in_main and not self.skip:
            self.parts.append(data)


def syllables(word):
    word = word.lower()
    count = len(re.findall(r'[aeiouy]+', word))
    if word.endswith('e') and count > 1:
        count -= 1
    return max(1, count)


def grade(html):
    parser = MainText()
    parser.feed(html)
    text = ' '.join(parser.parts)
    words = re.findall(r"[A-Za-z']+", text)
    if not words:
        return 0.0
    sentences = max(1, len(re.findall(r'[.!?]+(\s|$)', text)))
    syl = sum(syllables(w) for w in words)
    return round(0.39 * len(words) / sentences + 11.8 * syl / len(words) - 15.59, 1)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    print(grade(open(sys.argv[1], encoding='utf-8').read()))

Run it as python grade.py index.html. It prints one number. Aim for 9 or lower.

Short Sentences Do Most of the Work

Start every edit by finding the longest sentence on the page. Split it. Then find the next longest. Repeat until nothing runs past about twenty words.

Here is a typical sentence from a service page.

Our team of experienced technicians is committed to providing comprehensive diagnostic services utilizing the latest equipment to ensure your vehicle receives the highest quality care possible.

Here it is split and plain.

We find the cause before we fix anything. A tech hooks your car to a scan tool and tests the part that failed. You get a call with what we found and the price before any work starts.

The second one is longer in total. It scores far lower, and it says far more. It tells the reader what happens, who does it, and what they get.

Plain Words, and No Marketing Words

Swap long words for short ones when the short word means the same thing. Use instead of utilize. Help instead of assist. Start instead of commence. Buy instead of purchase.

Then cut the marketing words entirely. Best in class, world class, next level, solutions, one stop shop, and the like. They add syllables, they make the page sound like every other page, and readers skip them. Ask what the word claims, and write the fact instead. Not state of the art equipment. Write the name of the tool and what it checks.

Keep trade words that customers use. If people search for brake pads, say brake pads, not friction components. Plain means the words your customer uses, not baby talk.

Say What Happens Next and Who Does It

The best copy on a service site answers three questions for the reader. What happens next? When? Who does it?

• Not: Submit your request today.
• Instead: Send the form and someone from the shop will call you within two hours to confirm the time and the price.

Never promise a time the day cannot keep. Within two hours is a broken promise at nine at night. Tie the promise to your hours, or say next business morning.

Write in second person, to one reader. You and your car, not customers and their vehicles. It reads faster, and it sounds like a person talking.

Write for a Phone Screen

Most visitors to a local service site are on a phone. A paragraph that looks short on a laptop becomes a wall on a phone. Keep paragraphs to two to four sentences. Put the one thing a reader must know in the first sentence of each paragraph, so a reader who skims the first lines still gets the page.

Put the next step near the top, not only at the bottom. A reader who already knows they want to call should not have to scroll past five sections to find the number.

Use lists when the reader has to compare or follow steps. Use prose when you are explaining why. A page that is all lists reads like a form. A page that is all prose hides the steps.

Bold a few words, not whole sentences. Bold is a signpost. When everything is bold, nothing is.

Test It on One Real Reader

The score tells you if the page is hard. It does not tell you if the page is clear. For that, you need a person.

Hand your phone to someone who does not know your business. Give them one task, like find out what a brake check costs and how to book one. Say nothing else. Watch where they scroll, where they pause, and what they tap. Do not help.

Then ask them to tell you, in their own words, what happens after they book. If their answer matches your process, the page works. If they guess, or say they would call to ask, the page left out a step.

One person, ten minutes, no script. It finds problems a score never will, like a price that is on the page but hidden in the fourth paragraph.

What the Finishing Pieces Contain

You can measure and fix a page with what is above. The finishing pieces give you a build check that scores every page in a site folder and fails the build when one goes over grade 9. They include our full word swap table and the traps that throw the score off, like brand names, numbers and lists. They end with the edit order we follow on every page. Next, put plain copy to work on city pages that rank.