Write how you speak

Matt Weston, 16 May

I’ve started putting together a short style guide on how to write how you speak (see previous post). About half of what follows I bastardised from George Orwell’s “economy of words” blueprint: [i] “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” On average, we use longer words when we write than when we speak. [ii] “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” [iii] If you’re stuck, shut down the word doc you’re working on and start again, from scratch, in an email (putting the name of a close friend in the “To:” field can help). [iv] Turn your nouns into verbs. [v] “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” Er, I found a good explanation of this here. [vi] Don’t be afraid to use strings like “um”, “er”, and “hmmm”. They might be fillers, but fillers help conversations run smoothly. [vii] With this school of writing, punctuation and syntax are there to describe how you speak, not to prescribe how you write.

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Dennis G. Jerz says:
I particularly like the “close friend” e-mail suggestion. I’ll suggest that to my students. I think the key factor here is that most people who don’t think of themselves as professional writers only see the polished final product that’s produced by people whose livelihood depends on their ability to turn a phrase. They don’t think of writing as a process of discovery, so they start fixating on the grammatical accuracy of their earliest attempts at solving a problem. Getting them away from the tyranny of red and green wavy lines, and getting them into an environment where they feel comfortable in a give-and-take is good can get the creative juices flowing. Having said that, many people are redundant and ramble when they speak. For the subset of people who are good at speaking, your advice will work.
by Dennis G. Jerz on 16 May

Simon Wakeman says:
Spot on Matt - too many people seem to lose their focus on what they actually mean when writing copy, and make simple messages too complicated.

Combine this with the corporate jargon that exists in any organisation, and suddenly reading copy becomes a challenge rather than a please.

ps my trick for people who use long words to make themselves look clever is to ask them to define their terms - often they can’t, and when offered the simple alternative they leap at it, because it’s the best definition for the complicated word they used in the first place!
by Simon Wakeman on 17 May