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November 05, 2008

McCain and Obama’s election night speeches: How direct, how simple

Last night I stayed up late to watch the Presidential election results, and then stayed up even later to watch John McCain’s concession speech and Barack Obama’s victory speech.

Naturally, I was most interested in the tone and content of each speech: McCain gracious, noble, and honorable, and Obama proud but humble, grateful, and resolute. As had been the case throughout the campaign, the two candidates had very different styles: McCain more blunt and plain-talking; Obama more of an inspiring orator.

But, despite the differences, both speeches had two things in common. They were very direct. And they were extremely simple.

So simple, in fact, that I felt compelled to analyze them further. So I ran them through the Flesch reading ease test, which gives a score from 0 (complex) to 100 (simple) for how understandable a piece of writing is. And I also applied the Flesch-Kincaid test, which assigns a grade level rating; for example, sixth grade or 12th grade. (See more about each at Wikipedia.

(Both tests are available in the Spelling/Grammar tool in Microsoft Word or you can download tools from various web sites.)

Here’s what I learned:

McCain’s speech scored 73.3 on the Flesch reading ease test, meaning that what he said would be easily understandable by a 13-year-old. And he got a 6.9 (meaning just under seventh grade level) on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level rating.

Here’s a sample of how McCain spoke: “Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.”

Obama’s speech scored slightly lower on the Flesch reading ease test—70.7—which probably had to do with his style of sentences that go on for a while, building an idea over several phrases. (70.7 would also be understood by a 13-year-old). And his Flesch-Kincaid score—7.1—was also slightly higher than McCain.

Here’s a short segment of Obama’s speech: “It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled—Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states; we are and always will be the United States of America.”

Here’s my point: In today’s complicated world, your communication needs to be this simple. If you’re creating communication—leader talking points, e-mails, intranet content, etc.—that’s at the 10th or 12th grade level, and scores below 50 on the Flesch reading ease test, you run the risk of turning people off or confusing them.

You can’t run that risk. So you must simplify.

Posted by Alison Davis at November 5, 2008 11:38 AM