Technology is supposed to make our lives – and our jobs – easier, and in many instances it does. However, we’ve come full circle and sometimes it feels like it creates more problems than it solves. I firmly believe that a lot of content grading tools are guilty of this. I consign them to the category of chatbots, self-checkout tools, and the irritating little ‘web triage’ form at my GP surgery.
My own personal vendetta aside, I do feel like they can be detrimental to content creation, if not used in the right way.
What are content grading tools?
First things first, content grading tools, sometimes referred to as readability tools, are online tools that review and score your copy based on a number of factors such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, readability and clarity.
Many companies and organisations have subscriptions to these tools as a way to quality control content in a manageable way. For example, it’s common to set a minimum acquired grade to ensure all content produced is up to a certain standard. Outside of your marketing or copywriting department, other areas of the business may not feel confident writing content, so it can be a useful checker for those whose expertise lies elsewhere.
In theory, not a bad idea at all. And like everything in life, some are much better than others.
For the purpose of this article though, I’ll be looking at a few of the most common issues I’ve come across.
There’s no context or nuance
The underlying issue with these tools is that they are just that – tools. They can’t judge each sentence or paragraph on a case-by-case basis, or apply relevant opinion, or weigh up which errors are worse.
I once worked for a company manufacturing medical equipment. When we used their readability checker, it always flagged the name of the machines for being ‘complex and difficult vocabulary’. Because they were mentioned so often in each article, they almost always failed.
They’re often dominated by one or two specific factors
I don’t claim to have used every tool on the market, but the ones I have used seem to fixate on one or two metrics, to the detriment of the overall grammar (and my sanity).
I’ve found that sentence length is one of these fixations. Now I do think being prompted to think about sentence length is a really good thing, and it’s not just about being easier to read. Learning to write more concisely and be more deliberate with your words is a really valuable skill.
However it’s not more important than the correct use of grammar.
For this article, in its current form, Readability gave me a grade B.
I then shortened some of the sentences, often in ways that made no sense. You’ll see I also deliberately threw in some grammatical errors, such as missing apostrophes and the wrong use of ‘their’. Readability awarded it an A. Embarrassing.
The target reading age is too low
Part of the reason behind this obsession with short sentences, is that normally the target age is set to something ridiculously low like 8 or 10.
As a nation, our reading age is shockingly poor, so I get it. And if you’re a consumer-facing business selling to the general public, then it is something you need to take into account. If, on the other hand, you’re writing for a tech B2B audience, you probably don’t still need to talk to them like they’re primary school children. In fact it’s probably quite patronising.
The way they’re used
If you’re going to use readability tools, use them as a guide, not a bible. If they’re the gate to people publishing content, then it encourages bad writing, just to get a ‘pass’.
It’s also important to do your research. As mentioned, some tools are better than others. If you go for a paid version, you’ll also likely get options to tailor the criteria, which of course makes a huge difference.
Are they worth it?
This completely depends on what your business does, who your audience are, how much content you’re producing, and what capabilities you have in-house. For large organisations, it might be useful to have as a prompt, rather than the final step in your process. However, I would say if you’re going to do that, then Grammarly or Chat GPT do a better job anyway.
