Have you ever asked yourself why you communicate? Let’s face it: unless, like a politician, you suffer from a constant need to bore other people, you must have a purpose.
Maybe it’s to sell something: your product or service, or firm. Perhaps it’s to make something happen, or prevent it happening. Possibly it’s to clarify a misunderstanding or put over your point of view.
You may have many objectives. But whatever your purpose, I imagine you would agree it is, above all, essential that your audience understands what you are saying - quickly, easily and correctly. Otherwise, how are you to achieve your purpose?
Yet you may be surprised to know that many, perhaps most, printed commercial messages are ill understood by readers. The chief reason is that those who prepare them - writers and designers - know astoundingly little about what makes things easy to read.
For the most part, they rely on their own taste and judgement, or what is fashionable in “creative” circles. I put quotes round the word creative because, although the word implies originality, most slavishly follow whatever the current fad may be.
Slavish followers of fashion
Thus, if the fashion is for sans-serif type, or emphasising words regardless of their importance, or using certain words or phrases – like “strategic” or “key issues”, you will find many writers and art directors use them regardless of their suitability or how well they get your message across.
We can all have opinions about what we like, or what we think is tasteful, clever or well-arranged or visually exciting, but what really matters is, how well is your message conveyed? And oddly enough, a simple look at any daily paper reveals most of the principles.
The fundamental thing to recognise about words, type and layout is simple. They are tools to convey your message as clearly and quickly as possible. As the great typographical authority, Stanley Morison, noted: “Any disposition of type which, whatever the intention, comes between the reader and the meaning, is wrong”.
As you will see shortly, if you rely on taste, opinion or fashion the result is often disastrous; but happily, two men devoted many years to discovering how better use of language, type and layout makes for better communication.
Decades of research
One was Rudolph Flesch, an American, who studied what kinds and arrangements of words, sentences and paragraphs are most easily read. The other, an academic at the University of New South Wales called Colin Wheildon, conceived the idea of learning not whether people liked or disliked certain layouts or type styles, but how well they communicated.
He did this by taking some 200 Australian consumers, getting them to read certain passages laid-out in various ways, then asking them to describe what they had just read. He also asked them how easy they had found a particular piece to read. In other words he wanted to know how well different layout styles and typographic styles worked from a practical, not an aesthetic point of view.
The original research took over two years. As far as I know it is the most extensive and thorough of its kind. It has been extended and repeated over the 20-odd years since, and came out three years ago in a full-length book with the title 'Type and Layout'*. I recommend it if you want to make sure that whatever your message is, it gets through as well as possible.
In addition, since all messages aim to elicit a response – either, “yes, I understand” or “yes, I will do what you ask,” a lot of the results of direct response advertising can teach us lessons about what works and what doesn’t.
This piece distils some of the main things that have been learned from these three sources but the principal lesson is clear: people’s eyes and brains are lazy. If the eye has to adjust or make an effort, it will avoid doing so if possible. The same applies to the brain.
This should not surprise you: after all, how many business ideas – fast food, for example – succeed simply because people are lazy? First, let’s look at what has been learned about layout and typography.
A page of copy in serif type was comprehended well by 67% of readers. When the same copy was reset in sans serif, the figures nose-dived to 12%.
Why? Because the little “feet” on a line of serif type help keep people’s eyes on that line. So if you use sans serif type, make sure there’s plenty of leading – space – between the lines.
Perceived legibility of a series of headlines went down by over 20% when the setting was changed from capitals and lower case to capitals only. Imagine what happens to comprehension when someone sets a whole page in “caps” – which is quite the rage at the moment.
The eye recognises shapes, not individual letters, and a word set in caps has no shape, whereas the descenders and ascenders in caps and lower case give a word shape. What are descenders and ascenders? Well, in the word “shape”, h is an ascender and p is a descender.
Good comprehension slumped when type was set with ragged right setting (typically down from 67% to 38%) or, even more so with ragged left setting (67 down to 10 percent).
That’s because the eye has to adjust constantly. Often people set long passages “centred” – ragged on both sides. What do you suppose that does to comprehension?
For the same reason constant changes in typeface are not only ugly but confusing. This also applies to the needless changes in type size so fashionable amongst advertising agency art directors.
At least one person in ten has imperfect eyesight. So copy in very small type is usually unwise. And type set over tints or textures or colours so that it does not stand out clearly is fatal.
- Type set in narrow columns is easy to read - the eye doesn’t have to travel so far. Around 50 characters per line is about as long as it should go.
- Readers found headlines
laid out in a series
of “decks” or layers
like this were hard
to comprehend.
56% said they found headlines of more than four decks difficult.
Visual elements that point out of the layout - like people’s feet, or their sight lines - lead the readers out of the advertisement.
Illustrations that block off a column halfway down the page discourage the reader from travelling further.
Headlines marooned in the middle of the copy destroy the flow of that copy and halve good comprehension. So do headlines placed under the copy. The reader can’t be bothered to look up to the start of the copy.
Long, unbroken blocks of type are daunting. They should be broken up by crossheads, indents, and changes in type. Giving ‘shape’ to long letters also encourages readership.
- Huge headings take up expensive space you have paid for and only work if you have readers with arms 8 feet long.
When a lot of type is reversed out white on black, it kills response. In the case of one full-page magazine advertisement, response doubled when white on black was replaced with the normal black on white.
Captions are heavily read. If you run a picture without a caption, you lose the chance to communicate.
- Pictures of people’s faces gain enormous attention. Use them wherever you can.
Techniques that make for easier reading
If you buy The Wall Street Journal you will see how surprisingly easy the front page is to read. That is because it follows the rules laid down by Rudolph Flesch.
Best sellers and tabloid newspapers adhere to these techniques, as do direct response copywriters. They all have to make reading easy. Otherwise they go broke.
Sentences should be short. An average 16 words per sentence is ideal. The easiest sentence to read contains eight words. The average reader finds anything longer than 32 words hard to take in.
Paragraphs should be short, containing just one thought in each particularly the first paragraph.
- However, vary sentence and paragraph lengths to avoid dullness.
Words should be short and lively, not long and dull: eg, buy, not purchase; free. Not complimentary.
- Never use unnecessary words: eg, “for free” should be “free”; “miss out on” should be “miss”; “male personnel” should be “men”.
“You”, “yours” and “your” should appear 2-3 times more than “I”, “we”, “our”, “us” and “ours”. That’s because readers are interested in themselves – just as you are.
Use words and phrases at paragraph beginnings that encourage continued reading - like “And”, “Moreover”, “That is why” and “What’s more”. If you put questions at paragraph ends, this helps too. Why?
Because reader wants to know the answer – which is why you just read this sentence.
If you break sentences at the ends of pages and columns, this also encourages continued reading. Put ‘Please turn over’ or the like at the end of a letter page.
There are other points well worth knowing, but that’s all I have room for here. Thanks for reading through to the end; I hope you found it easy - and clear.
Best,
Drayton
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com
