
Two recent conversations made me worry I’ve given you bad advice…
The first was with internal comms expert Scott McInnes.
Over a coffee, he asked me what I thought about the advice, ‘Write like you speak.’
It’s something I tell clients to get them to loosen up their language and sound more approachable.
To help them ditch the ‘leverages’ and the ‘utilises’ and be more human.
Scott told me how slow at typing he was, so he prefers to dictate his emails into a transcribing app and then edit them.
He observed:
‘It makes me realise how verbose I am when I talk. The emails always need a LOT of editing. I don’t think I should write like I speak.’
The second, similar, conversation was an email exchange with one of my readers.
Let’s call him Toby.
Toby had been told by his boss that his writing was ‘like I’m speaking to her in person through my emails, like I’m in her head when she reads them.’
Toby had assumed this was a good thing – after all, he was being himself. But apparently not. His manager wanted him to ‘say more with less’.
I’ve reflected that ‘Write like you speak’ isn’t bad advice per se.
But perhaps it’s not complete guidance.
Here’s why: When we speak we often rely on sentence fragments, filler words (like ‘really’, ‘definitely’ and ‘absolutely’) and, frankly, mind-reading to get our point across.
For example, this morning I asked my teens if they could:
‘Empty the thingymajig and afterwards you know just sort of do a quick zhuzh if you get what I mean.’
Remarkably, they knew what I was talking about! (Of course, actually doing it was a whole other thing…)
But if I’d written that weird waffly sentence down, they might have booked me a therapist appointment.
Yes, writing in a conversational tone is great for connecting with people.
But as Scott and Toby found, writing exactly as we speak isn’t so good for clarity or brevity.
We have less tolerance for wordy writing than we do for wordy talking.
We can’t tell people to shut up when they’re standing in front of us – but we can just stop reading emails!
So my revised advice is:
Write like you speak…on a really good day.
When you’re short, sharp and to the point.
When you don’t use redundant words or repeat yourself.
When you get your message across concisely, but still sound warm.
Do you write like you speak? I’d love to know.
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