Write like you talk
paulgraham.com
Write like you talk
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Re: Write like you talk
#2I prefer to write like a man reading his powerpoint slides verbatim
Re: Write like you talk
#3The hardest thing about communication is clarity.
Re: Write like you talk
#4If you're interested in becoming a better non-fiction writer, I can't over-recommend William Zinsser's "On Writing Well".
Re: Write like you talk
#5I've always written essays on ideas, but it wasn't until when I wanted to start publishing my writing on a blog that I found this idea true. Often times flowery language can sacrifice the clarity of your prose for attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are.
It's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]
[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Re: Write like you talk
#6It just depends upon your aims. If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load.
If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to make sentences glimmer or express significance.
I'm not sure what the thesis of this essay is since it starts out as "If you want more people to read what you write..." Well no, if you're a novelist, I wouldn't recommend this essay to you. And that's not just me being a pedant either; I think this whole essay is simply advice to CEOs who are trying to talk about their idea.
The thing that "comes over most people" is actually them trying to actually express their real selves, which often gets clouded in day-to-day interactions with others. The idea that you should just shut this off is nonsense and a barrier to increased creativity. You can write in a creative fashion while still maintaining a simple delivery. Just look at Larry Wall.
Re: Write like you talk
#7If you can't say "mercurial Spaniard" to your friends, get new friends.
Re: Write like you talk
#8I feel like us Swiss german people have a leg up here. We grow up writing anything personal in our dialect (a language that doesn't officially exist in written form), so we're used to writing like we talk. I wonder if it has an effect on our more formal, business-related writing.
Re: Write like you talk
#9This is fairly popular advice, and I heard it at least a half dozen times at my (liberal arts) college. That's not to dismiss this post because its takeaway is commonplace: I agree with the sentiment. However, I think it's important to embrace the full implication of its thesis:
Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.
Athletic clothing is comfortable, it is functional, and it traffics in convenience.
But people wear clothes for aesthetics, for culture, for dozens of reasons.
When you optimize for, say, being as easily digestible by as many people as possible, you may reduce your nuance or your aesthetic or whatever. And words like mercurial tend to have unique depths and distinctions that keep them being used by the Neil Olivers of the world. That's a good thing.
(As a minor aside that doesn't detract from his point: You'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of "write" in a conversation with a friend. Really? Some people just feel more comfortable in suits than in sweatpants. There's nothing wrong with that.)
Re: Write like you talk
#10It just depends upon your aims. If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load. If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to mak…
Hemingway would disagree with you about novels.