Write like a third-grader
Our most surprising finding was that the reading grade level of your emails has a dramatic impact on response rates. Emails written at a third-grade reading level were optimal. They provided a whopping 36% lift over emails written at a college reading level and a 17% higher response rate than emails written even at a high school reading level.
As someone who's been described as a "pedantic rambler," this one hits me right in the fingers. But rather than decry the state of English language education, I'll just try to roll with it and streamline my lexicon simplify my verbiage use shorter words in shorter sentences.
Of course, the context of your email matters a lot. If you're sending an email discussing the finer points of your Ph.D. thesis to the professor who's evaluating you for a postdoctoral fellowship, you probably need every syllable you can get!
On the other hand, if you're emailing football trash talk to an Auburn graduate, don't use words with more than four letters if you want them to understand what you're saying – Roll Tide! If you don't have any reason to adjust the writing level, though, third grade is a good default.
The main parts of your reading grade level score are the number of syllables in your words and the number of words in your sentences. So try simpler words and fewer words per sentence than you normally would. You can check your content's reading grade level in the Word Count tool in most word processors. Or search for "Flesch Kincaid grade level" to find plenty of online tools that can calculate it for you.
