Readability: Who are you writing for

The following article first appeared on the design magazine Onextrapixel on 10 Oct

Readability is how well your text can be understood on first reading and is an important factor in how well your site will be received. As a skill within copywriting, creating or editing content to be easier to read will give your designs a competitive edge.

It has many aspects from the layout of the text on the page to use of fonts, amount of whitespace etc. The aspect I’m looking at here is the actual words used on the page and how they are put together.

Copywriting is an essential skill for designers and developers because sometimes the content supplied by a client, if it’s supplied at all is less than it could be. The client may be highly skilled in their field but if they’re not a trained communicator – or don’t have one on their staff then you have to fulfil this task.

Read the whole article on Onextrapixel