RE: Commnicating with an audience of low literacy levels

[Yves JEAUROND <jingting -at- rogers -dot- com>]

Grade 6 reading isn't so bad, even on a Friday. :-)
Remember what we were reading then? Heinlein, Asimov,
Jules Verne, the Hardy Boys... My children were reading Harry Potter, Nancy Drew...
   
  More in line with Piaget or Adler & Hutchins' Great Books project:
 there may be just a few reading plateaux: elementary, early-intermediate, intermediate, advanced, specialized...
   
  Having an intermediate level (gr.7) would be adequate for an adult reading a business plan,
the dosage of a drug, a warning on a road sign or <grin> a user guide... I use advanced and specialized skills when writing, but not when reading ads for garage sales in the paper or looking up the spelling of a word. 
  Does one have to have read the hardest fiction to be literate--Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace come to mind? Or know about & enjoy the latest & greatest poetry, philosophy, science, politics, linguistics? Learn more languages? Become an actor, a news anchor, a radio host? I enjoy that stuff, but that's just me.
   
  Writing for an audience of intermediate readers forces one to get off the high horse
of specialized literacy and literary hedonism to talk plain language to people who want to get the job done. No shame in that.
   
  Regards,
   
  YJ
  

Dori Green <dgreen -at- associatedbrands -dot- com> a écrit :
  Best advice I ever got (or gave):

Edit for the standard "military" sixth-grade reading level.

Beta-test on at least three actual living breathing sixth-graders.

Dori Green
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