Another way to explore persuasion and technical writing is through the lens of readability formulas. which are used to predict readability. In the 1920’s these formulas were used in education to assess texts as suitable for the various grades in school and can now be found in areas such as insurance, law, health care and industry. Harry D Kitson published the “Mind of the Buyer” in 1921. He explained how sentence length and word length determined the audience for different magazines and newspapers. Therefore companies now had an insight into how to write and present information to engage their products and services with different audiences. While there was a depression in America from 1920 to 1921, there was a boom in the economy in the remainder of the 1920’s mainly due to technological advances leading to a mass production of goods, electrification of America, mass marketing techniques and increased employment thus generating a significant amount of new consumers.
Therefore as a technical writer, could it be argued that your style of writing or how you present content is determined by the consumer? Commercially, your employer is in the business of profit and part of profit growth is persuading the consumer to purchase your goods or services. In addition, part of the craft of the technical writer is to write in such a way as to engage the audience that you are writing for. On the other hand, detractors of readability formulas argue that there is a dumbing down of language and the process of technical writing when using readability formulas only