Write The Way You Speak
Posted by Jaci Russo
The following blog might generate a backlash within my office from the NPR-listening, New Yorker-subscribing, Hemingway/Austen/Fitzgerald-reading more literate of my teammates. It’s okay. I can take it.
The days of formal written English are ending. Whether we like it or not, we don’t write, or speak, like Shakespeare any more. As our conversations become more casual, so does our writing. Or at least it should.
When I receive a sales message, via email/print ad/brochure/tv spot, and it is stiff and formal with “Olde English” in full use, I have to wonder why. Will the whole company be dressed in formal attire with velvet smoking jackets and top hats when I walk in? Probably not. So why do they sound that way in their outside communications?
I am not advocating that we forego and abandon all use of protocol. I believe that we should still spell words correctly and use proper punctuation, but we can leave the $5 words in the dictionary where they belong. It doesn’t mean that every sentence has to be filled with mono-syllabic words and a “dumbed” down message. Just that you shouldn’t try so hard to be stiff and formal. Your corporate communications should be written by someone with a background in…wait for it…communications. Not legal. Not research. Not even “marketing speak”. Conversational communications.
You may feel like you have to use “formal stilted business speak” because that’s “how it’s always been” and your industry expects it. Resist the urge to continue this dying tradition. Instead, speak like a human being.
- Using industry jargon will be a big turn off.
- Making a connection with the reader is always better than talking over their heads.
- Using big vocabulary words gives the appearance of hiding behind something.
- The people reading what you wrote don’t talk that way.
- You don’t want your audience to have to think so hard about what you mean.
- Readers want to skim and not have to reread a sentence to figure it out.
- Writing conversationally will always be better than writing formally.
Be a trend setter in your industry and see the benefits of changing the conversation:
- If you use regular everyday conversational words then you won’t be misunderstood or misquoted.
- If it’s understandable then it can form a connection.
- If there’s a connection then action will follow.
There are some forms of communication that demand a human conversational voice. In blogs, for example, the tone has to be conversational. As a recent study by Hubspot indicates, companies who blog get a lot more action.
“Business that blog see 55% more visitors (more people to connect with and convert to sales), 97% more inbound links (which signals authority to search engines), and 434% more indexed pages (more chances to be found by search engines).”
But a blog is the last place you would expect to find a formal communications message. Yet, if you write conversationally in your blog and formally in your other communications, it will create quite a disconnect for your readers. If you want people to respond to what you write then you need to write in a way that they can connect with the message.
People are bombarded with 3000 messages a day. The formal stilted writing is going to be the easiest ones to ignore.
Don’t write to be ignored. Write to be understood. Change the conversation and make a connection.
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