Make sure your content is understandable

Reading level tools reveal the reading level of your content, but they can't tell you if it makes sense.

Have others check your content

Test your content to make sure your content is easy to read and understand:

• Ask colleagues who aren't familiar with the subject to review the text for clarity and logic
• Work with your communications team to set up usability testing for your content

Tips to improve understanding

If your content has a high reading level, or if usability testing shows low task completion, try to:

• Shorten words, sentences or paragraphs, but keep words of 3 or more syllables if they're well known
• Replace technical jargon with terms that people will understand
• Remove details that people don't need to complete the task
• Replace secondary references to a program with "program" rather than using its full name or abbreviation
• Create numbered or bulleted lists for key tasks