Reader Comprehension Quotes

To be understood a writer has to explain almost everything.

You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.

I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative.

The public, too, has to make an effort in order to understand the writer who, though he renounce complacent obscurity, cannot always express his new-hidden thoughts lucidly and according to accepted models.

You say what you have to say. But you have to learn to say it in such a way that the reader can see what you mean.

Those who write clearly have readers.

When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.

Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.

One of my rigid goals is to keep each book under 300 pages because I think so much nonfiction is literally weighty that people don't get through these books ... If people don't finish your book, then they don't know what you're talking about.

When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader.

More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader.

In a long story like 'Weathercraft,' it becomes kind of convoluted. It can become perhaps difficult to remember what led up to whatever point you're at. I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got wherever they were.

What I do find enormously gratifying is the reviews my books get from the American press. They are so on the ball compared to anywhere else. It's so satisfying to get a review that conveys the reader understood precisely what I was trying to get at.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work to remember who somebody is.

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?