U.S. credit card agreements unreadable to 4 out of 5 adults

Connie Prater Credit Cards.com 07/22/2010 19:46

Credit card agreements are written on average at a 12th grade reading level, making them not understandable to four out of five adults, according to a CreditCards.com analysis of all the agreements offered by major card issuers in the United States.

The average American adult reads at a ninth-grade level and readability experts recommend important information -- such as credit card agreements -- be written at that level. Only one in five adults reads above a 12th-grade level.

"It is clear from your study that something must be done to make these agreements easier to read," says Lauren Z. Bowne, staff attorney for Consumers Union, the nonprofit owner of Consumer Reports magazine.

"Credit card contracts and other such documents are written in dense prose for a reason: So that the customer will NOT be able to understand it," notes Roy Peter Clark, a national expert on writing and a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I may be cynical, but I don't think their writing strategies are accidental, the collateral damage of a bureaucratic mindset. I think those writers know exactly what they are doing."