Did You Know?

It’s recommended to use subheadings to make articles easier to read. Yet for some writers, the very idea feels like spoon-feeding an intelligent audience. It’s as though simplicity, designed to engage, has become a constraint on expression.

Write to Your Reader’s Level?

A common piece of advice in writing is to “write to your reader’s level,” a mantra endorsed by experts in publishing and education. Readability scores, like the Flesch-Kincaid, are widely used in journalism and marketing to gauge accessibility, often recommending an 8th-grade reading level for general audiences. This guideline aims to make content impactful, engaging, and, above all, accessible.

According to resources like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor, writers are encouraged to use concise sentences and avoid complex structures to align with typical comprehension levels. But here lies the crux: is this approach always necessary? Or does it sometimes constrain a writer’s growth and the richness of expression?

What it Means for Me

When I started, these expectations were less of an issue. My writing comfortably fit within the bounds of accessibility. But as I invested thousands of hours into honing my craft, my voice began to shift. Now, I find myself reaching for the stars, exploring intricate language and weaving nuanced layers into my prose.

This journey toward complexity, however, creates a problem. On a good day, my work barely scrapes a 68% readability score. My sentence structures are deemed too complex, my content too dense, and I resist using subheadings. They feel cumbersome, unnecessary—a compromise. By stripping down the reading experience, I worry I’m insulting an intelligent reader’s capabilities. And yet, my engagement suffers for it. As a writer whose livelihood depends on that engagement, this decline has tangible consequences.

The Conflict

The conflict, though, runs deeper. If I push beyond the standard, I risk alienating readers. Writing is an act of service to the reader, and ambition can easily slip into arrogance. Ignoring readership expectations for self-aggrandizement reflects poorly on any writer. Disregarding comprehension is not only impractical—it’s disrespectful. Arrogance, after all, is willfully ignoring limits for the sake of self-indulgence.

But there’s a broader, social implication here, too. If every writer aims at the 8th-grade level, then that standard eventually becomes the maximum. It’s a form of literary deflation. We’re already seeing signs of this shift in our elite colleges, where professors increasingly report that students struggle to read a single book, many having rarely done so.

A Look Back: Writing for the Common Person

Consider the standard for public writing in early America. This was a newspaper excerpt from The Independent Journal, February 23, 1788—written for everyday readers:

“We have seen, that an uncontrollable power over the elections to the federal government could not, without hazard, be committed to the State legislatures. Let us now see, what would be the danger on the other side; that is, from confiding the ultimate right of regulating its own elections to the Union itself…”

Not exactly accessible by today’s standards, yet these papers were read and digested by the general population. Likewise, letters between Abigail and John Adams, while informal, showcase a robust vocabulary and intricate reasoning not commonly expected in modern discourse:

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency—and by the way in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies…”

Today, I’m lucky if I get a “K” in response to a heartfelt text.

An Honest Question

So, is it worth it? I love what I do. Should I push myself? Should I reach for the stars, craft biting, emotional prose, and let florid language carry me to new heights? Or should I trade in my wings for golden shackles, finding solace in the larger readership pie?

This question nags at me. Would it be worth the suffering, the potential for obscurity, to push my limits and pray readers reward that effort? Or am I tilting at windmills?

I know I risk falling into a false dichotomy here, but no alternative yet comes to mind. And as I wrestle with this, my resolve hardens. There’s a joy—no, a reverence—in constructing a beautiful phrase. A single, symmetrical sentence, packed with vivid truth, is always a pleasure to behold.

A Resolve, Perhaps

In the end, perhaps it’s enough to write for the love of words, for the magic of language itself. Writing has given me so much over the years—clarity, peace, perspective, focus. I owe it a genuine, unrestrained voice in return. If that love finds resonance with even one reader, maybe I’ve done my part.

Even if I starve doing it.