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UX Writers: what grade level are you writing at?

What grade level should you be writing at? How do you determine your copy’s grade level?

Daley Wilhelm
UX Collective
6 min readJul 9, 2024

A girl with glasses sits and reads on a small retaining wall with lots of plants behind her.
Do you know what 7th graders can read? Photo by Min An: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-white-dress-reading-book-1196338/

In my last article, I detailed the unfortunate fact of falling literacy rates. Reading comprehension is down, and this is a problem that shouldn’t just be the concern of teachers, parents, and students. The U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy has found that 43% of the U.S. population has low literacy.

Knowing what grade level you are writing at is more important than ever. UX professionals cannot assume that their audience will understand their copy.

User experience writers are encouraged to write in “plain English” or with “plain language.” What does that actually mean?

Typically, this advice is meant to emphasize the importance of accessibility: you should write in a way that is easy to understand so that all users can access and comprehend your copy. Those users include —

  • children and adults
  • native and non-native speakers
  • neurotypical and neurodivergent readers
  • focused and distracted readers

Of course, the copy in question’s audience will differ depending on the content. Highly…

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Daley Wilhelm

A fiction writer turned UX writer dedicated to crisp copy, inclusive experiences, and humanizing tech.

Responses (4)

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for the data Daley. I use Hemingway every time I write. Cheers

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An assistant teacher in South Valley and an expert researcher in educational technologies. I help a lot in the field of design, production and manufacture of interactive educational content, in a simplified and interesting manner, and I succeeded in writing educational writing and coordinating electroni design.

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Well written 👏
Great!

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