[Writing & Readability Guideline] Make your TOPIC/POST READABLE for your readers

[akamit]

What is readability? (source: read full)
Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects like font size, line height, and line length). Researchers have used various factors to measure readability, such as,

• Speed of perception
• Perceptibility at a distance
• Perceptibility in peripheral vision
• Visibility
• Reflex blink technique
• Rate of work (reading speed)
• Eye movements
• Fatigue in reading

Readability is more than simply legibility—which is a measure of how easily a reader can distinguish individual letters or characters from each other.

Higher readability eases reading effort and speed for any reader, but it is especially important for those who do not have high reading comprehension. In readers with average or poor reading comprehension, raising the readability level of a text from mediocre to good can make the difference between success and failure of its communication goals.


What is typography? (source: read full)
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process.

Well, enough of introduction as of now, I'll add more articles, examples when I will get more good sources.

I have created this guideline so that our fellow members can present us readable contents in proper styling in their every topic/post.
The reason for this, we can see almost every day some newly created topics or posts which is totally unreadable. Topics and posts with low readability score cause readers to lose interest, time waste, mood off, eye issues, etc.

Some Examples: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4

In example 1 & 2, you can see how the user wrote everything in a congested way. No paragraphs, no line-spacing (I hope you can understand the issue here)
In example 3, the user used too many paragraphs for small sentences and also bolded the whole content. (Full bold content is not good for readers eyes and also it doesn't look nice at all.)
In example 4, the user could have used some line spacing to make the content look more organized. (This is not a big issue, but I also wanted to show a minimal issue)


Do's and Don'ts: (source: read full - taken up to point 7, except 2)

• Have something to say

        - This makes writing easier and faster. When you have nothing to say, you are forced to write sentences that sound meaningful but deliver nothing.
            Read widely. Take notes. Choose your subjects wisely. Then share your information with readers.

• Be specific

       - Read this article

• Choose simple words

        - Write use instead of utilize, near instead of close proximity, help instead of facilitate, for instead of in the amount of, start instead of commence.
            Use longer words only if your meaning is so specific no other words will do.

• Write short sentences

        - You should keep sentences short for the same reason you keep paragraphs short: they’re easier to read and understand.
            Each sentence should have one simple thought. More than that creates complexity and invites confusion.

• Keep paragraphs short

        - Look at any newspaper and notice the short paragraphs.
           That’s done to make reading easier, because our brains take in information better when it’s broken into small chunks.
          

• Straight to the point

       - Save the readers time, because time is a precious thing.

• Don’t be redundant or repeat yourself

       - Also, don’t keep writing the same thing over and over and over. In other words, say something once rather than several times.
          Because when you repeat yourself or keep writing the same thing, your readers go to sleep.

• Use font size, line height, and line length wherever is necessary. Organize your content in a nice looking way.
• Don't make your whole content bolded. Use bold option wherever it is necessary.
• Don't make your whole content colorful. Use colors wherever it is necessary.
• Don't make a congested topic/post. Give some space to breathe.

The guide is not complete or perfect yet. The guide will be perfect when the community opinions and suggestions will start to roll in. Please let me know some good examples, articles, opinions, suggestions.
I tried to gather all the information and write here in a short and easy manner. Maybe I have missed out some points which I should have added.

I'm not sure if any thread on this topic has been created before. If there is one then let me know I'll move this one to archival.

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[1miau]

Same here, if the post is just a text of wall or poorly formatted I tend to quit it immediately and read something else. Formatting a post is really a deciding factor if a post will be good or bad because formatting helps a lot to make the message clear and easier to understand.
In opposite, a misformatted layout can destroy even a good content.

And for very long topics like guides or explanations of technical things, pictures can help a lot. A meaningful picture can replace a complete paragraph and the comprehensibility is in most cases by far better than described in a text.

[jademaxsuy]

A good topic title will help promote the post and with its good content that has supporting details will add up the post constructively.

I am not just basing on the post on how readable it is but yes you are right OP it should be readable to which most of the users here were trying to do that as much as possible.

But, since we are coming from different countries all over the world and local sections does not compromise the total information needed for a user then it will tend to visit other sections. And for this, with the little knowledge on constructing grammar for English language starts the difficulty on creating the post that are not correctly constructed its grammar and might not be readable.

See xtraelv post about shitposts that are actually funny. There you can see that not all users are native English speaker. They are just wanna be.