I agree with your points. Some people seem to think complicated writing shows that they are intelligent and sophisticated. We’ve had a few clients who didn’t get the point and said our writing was too simple. It’s usually more challenging to explain something in a simple and succinct way. Mark Twain summed it up when he wrote, ‘I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead’.

Flesch-Kincaid scores are an easy way to measure the readability of your writing. I am surprised when I meet people who work in corporate communications and have never heard about readability scales. The concept isn’t taught in public relations or marketing programs.

Yes it SHOULD be something obvious for writers–but it ISN’T! Fully 60% of what comes out of my agency is copy that sounds like “let us tell you about us”. And that’s the way our clients think it should be.