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October 2015  
  
Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write in
spoken language.  
  
Something comes over most people when they start writing. They write in a
different language than they'd use if they were talking to a friend. The
sentence structure and even the words are different. No one uses "pen" as a
verb in spoken English. You'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of
"write" in a conversation with a friend.  
  
The last straw for me was a sentence I read a couple days ago:

> The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira, all is decadence."

It's from Neil Oliver's _A History of Ancient Britain_. I feel bad making an
example of this book, because it's no worse than lots of others. But just
imagine calling Picasso "the mercurial Spaniard" when talking to a friend.
Even one sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation. And yet people
write whole books of it.  
  
Ok, so written and spoken language are different. Does that make written
language worse?  
  
If you want people to read and understand what you write, yes. Written
language is more complex, which makes it more work to read. It's also more
formal and distant, which gives the reader's attention permission to drift.
But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the
writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are.  
  
You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas. When specialists in
some abstruse topic talk to one another about ideas in their field, they don't
use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have
for lunch. They use different words, certainly. But even those they use no
more than necessary. And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more
informally experts speak. Partly, I think, because they have less to prove,
and partly because the harder the ideas you're talking about, the less you can
afford to let language get in the way.  
  
Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.  
  
I'm not saying spoken language always works best. Poetry is as much music as
text, so you can say things you wouldn't say in conversation. And there are a
handful of writers who can get away with using fancy language in prose. And
then of course there are cases where writers don't want to make it easy to
understand what they're saying—in corporate announcements of bad news, for
example, or at the more _bogus_ end of the humanities. But for nearly everyone
else, spoken language is better.  
  
It seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language. So perhaps
the best solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then
afterward look at each sentence and ask "Is this the way I'd say this if I
were talking to a friend?" If it isn't, imagine what you would say, and use
that instead. After a while this filter will start to operate as you write.
When you write something you wouldn't say, you'll hear the clank as it hits
the page.  
  
Before I publish a new essay, I read it out loud and fix everything that
doesn't sound like conversation. I even fix bits that are phonetically
awkward; I don't know if that's necessary, but it doesn't cost much.  
  
This trick may not always be enough. I've seen writing so far removed from
spoken language that it couldn't be fixed sentence by sentence. For cases like
that there's a more drastic solution. After writing the first draft, try
explaining to a friend what you just wrote. Then replace the draft with what
you said to your friend.  
  
People often tell me how much my essays sound like me talking. The fact that
this seems worthy of comment shows how rarely people manage to write in spoken
language. Otherwise everyone's writing would sound like them talking.  
  
If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you'll be ahead of 95% of
writers. And it's so easy to do: just don't let a sentence through unless it's
the way you'd say it to a friend.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Thanks** to Patrick Collison and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of
this.  
  
  
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