
Write like you talk - bakztfuture
http://paulgraham.com/talk.html
======
stupidcar
If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation,
you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the
cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double
back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects.

When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on
the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on the important bits and
forgetting the rest. When it's presented in written form, such as in a
newspaper or magazine article, a skilled journalist has usually done the
editing for us.

This means that what we consider a “conversational” tone in written language
is not a representation of natural communication so much as an idealised
version of it. That doesn't mean it isn't useful to strive for it,
particularly in business and academic writing that otherwise tends towards the
turgid, but it isn't as simple as telling people to “write how you talk”.
Writing conversational prose that achieves clarity whilst not being
oversimplified, patronising or banal requires practice and skill.

I also think, conversely, that while a conversational tone can improve formal
writing about complex topics, the reverse can be true. It's possible to
enliven mundane topics by being less direct and more playful with language.

~~~
gh02t
Indeed, "write like you talk" is not quite the right way to go about it. In my
experience that usually leads to a stream-of-consciousness mess.

However, one thing I have found almost universally helps my students is
similar: read what you have written OUT LOUD. Is it halting and hard to read?
Confusing and obtuse? Then you should probably fix it. There seems to be some
magic about actually speaking the words out loud (as opposed to just reading
it like normal editing) that helps a lot of people figure out when a piece of
writing is bad.

~~~
__abc
Isn't he basically saying use your natural lexicon vs. an artificial one
(typically used to make oneself sound more educated).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This is funny, perhaps like others here, I find I usually have to reduce the
complexity of my speech compared to my internal dialogue: particularly in
using more commonplace vocabulary. Sadly barely anyone I know (including my
wife) understands half the words I use. Indeed sometimes I don't really grok
them myself; my brain just finds them most apposite.

So should I write as I [find I need to] speak or should I write with my
natural lexicon?

~~~
Nexxxeh
Depends. The main point the author in the OP doesn't seem to understand:

Know your audience.

"Dumb down" your writing, but only if it will help you communicate with the
person (or people) you're targeting. Else there's no benefit to it.

------
alecdbrooks
This is good advice, but I disagree with his example. The entire paragraph
reads[0]:

>The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for
perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. But
it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — that later
masters like Picasso were able to stand. The mercurial Spaniard himself
declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence.'

Sure, for maximum clarity, Neil Oliver could have written more like he talks.
But this paragraph is clear enough and written in an appealing style. It might
not be Paul Graham's favorite style, but that doesn't make it bad writing.

I also think the sentence he picked is particularly unconversational, which is
misleading for two reasons. One, it makes Oliver's style sound more opaque and
formal than it actually is. Two, even in a more conversational style than
Oliver's, you're occasionally going to include something that's a step more
formal.

I think Graham knows this, albeit unconsciously. Would he really say "Informal
language is the athletic clothing of ideas" in a conversation? Probably not,
but it reasonably passed his read aloud test because it's a good distillation
of his point.

[0]:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uk0AgAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uk0AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22A+History+of+Ancient+Britain%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMImOmc8dDeyAIVReEmCh3bugxv#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
vonklaus
I actually like this a lot. He uses a conversational/informal style and it
almost flows like a rehearsed piece of conversation:

> it will always be rightly described as primitive.

> . But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders —
> that

He starts a sentence with _But_ and puts dashes in for pause effects. Does he
go a bit purply in his prose towards the end? Sure. I think that is the
difference between writing and conversation though. You can write well,
explain your points and have a simple flow using the a comfortable tone. e.g.
not forcing absurd 10cent works into your works and being unnecessarily
complex. However, you can use a sentence structure like:

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

For dramatic effect. Author departs from his clean flow to qoute somebody who
speaks differently than himself. And it looks like the mercurial spanaird
talks funny which is underscored by the authors' change in tone.

~~~
tgb
I agree with your analysis of the first sentence, but the second still sounds
awful and stilted to me! I'd rewrite as:

> >The Upper Paleolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for
> perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive.
> But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — that
> later masters were able to stand. Picasso himself declared: 'After Altamira,
> all is decadence.'

What's the point of "mercurial" or "Spaniard" being included? Irrelevant
detail that, frankly, trips my tongue up when reading (and when my tongue
trips, I stumble slightly even while silently reading).

------
jmduke
This 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.)

~~~
grey-area
Exactly, formality can be part of the message, and sometimes _less is a bore_.

There is certainly a place for more formal language at times, if only to
communicate intent and add a bit of pepper to the writing. For example Will
Self would not be Will Self without using ten words where one would do, nor
would Poe or Henry James (who I suspect spoke much as he wrote).

I think what pg is objecting to here though is probably people putting on airs
by attempting a more formal register than they are comfortable with, and thus
coming across as a little stilted and a little fake and obscuring their
meaning rather than communicating it. This is a particular problem in art
criticism, where postmodern art critics adopt a certain stilted, formal, and
impenetrable language as a sort of shibboleth; the height of this style is
probably someone like Camille Paglia, who gives the impression of saying much
about Art without saying much at all (IMO).

Of course you can also do the same by trying to be informal without being
intimately acquainted with the particular usage you're trying to emulate, and
it depends who you're talking to. What is appropriate (both in speech and in
writing) depends on context more than we like to admit.

~~~
dreamfactory2
Quite. There is that ghastly put-on cutesy/folksy over-friendly style that a
lot of startups use - which is every bit as stilted and ill-fitting as over-
formality.

------
aWidebrant
"Write like you talk" is bad advice twice: It encourages rambling, which -
unlike in a conversation - the reader has no means to interrupt, and it offers
no clear rules to follow while writing. Orwell's six[1] are, in my experience,
much more useful:

    
    
      (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which
          you are used to seeing in print.
    
      (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
    
      (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
    
      (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
    
      (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon
          word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
    
      (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright
           barbarous.
    

[1]
[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

~~~
hugh4
>(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it.

If possible to cut a word, cut it.

If possible, cut.

But of course "if possible" is implied, he wouldn't be advising you to do
anything impossible, so just:

Cut.

~~~
rquantz
You're misunderstanding "if possible" here. It means "if it can be done while
conveying all that you need to convey, and saying all that you mean." "Cut"
doesn't do that.

~~~
cableshaft
How about "Cut words out, when possible."?

------
wyclif
"To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could
talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder,
I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this
class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful
effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted
friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague,
as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your
grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really
was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If
something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading.
So, this above all: Find your own voice."

~ Christopher Hitchens

~~~
agarden
This seems much better advice.

I found the opposite of PG. I discovered that when I worked on talking the way
I wrote, my speech became much better and more interesting.

Now, PG speaks off the cuff pretty well. So I suppose if people find you well
spoken, it makes sense to try to write more like you talk. But if you write
better than you speak, make your speech more like your writing.

------
vonnik
The PG headline is really the first half of a larger sentence: Write like you
talk, and try to talk in concise, plain language.

If you have trouble doing this, the Hemingway App might help.
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

There are a lot of problems with the way people write. Some writers are too
writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese, most are too vague. But
better than any -ese is being able to communicate complex ideas to intelligent
outsiders in a shared, common language.

To do that, you have to think a lot about what your main points are, how they
connect, and what your readers will probably misunderstand. Then you address
that. You answer questions before they are asked.

Sure, there are other ways to write. I like a good dose of purple prose, or
19th-century Russian fiction. But it probably doesn't belong in a memo.

In the end, you shouldn't write like you talk, because as many others have
said here, talking is messy. The real trick is to write in a way that makes
people think you're talking to them. The writer finds tricks that make it seem
like she's talking, even though speech has been translated to the page. Then
the reader can hear your voice, and there's nothing getting in the way.

~~~
visakanv
> Some writers are too writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese,
> most are too vague. But better than any -ese is being able to communicate
> complex ideas to intelligent outsiders in a shared, common language.

Agred. And this is something that is taught, rather than in-born. Most people
pick up their writing skills in school, where big words and long sentences can
give you better marks than a simple, heartfelt explanation.

It takes a long time and a lot of practice to shake this off.

------
trjordan
If you're going to do this, edit heavily afterwards.

Most conversation is pretty redundant. Because not everybody hears every word,
it's acceptable to say things a couple different ways in order to make sure
you're understood. That's less OK in an essay or email, because it's assumed
you considered everything you wrote.

If you don't believe me, try transcribing an email instead of typing it.
Simple transcriptions aren't good writing.

~~~
whatafaaa
Especially with email I value brevity over "natural" language. I spend time
editing my written communications so others don't have to waste time getting
to the meat of the message.

------
joslin01
It 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.

~~~
_delirium
> 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.

Even for transferring knowledge, it depends a lot on what knowledge you're
trying to transfer, and to whom. In scientific writing, the more pop-science
the goal of the article, the more conversational the style should be, and
vice-versa. In a paper by someone in my field written for other people in the
field, a pop-science conversational style isn't helpful, and would increase
the cognitive load. In that case, I want clarity, precision, and accuracy,
which is often helped by using a more specialized language.

This has been one of the main changes in science writing from earlier
centuries. If you read 17th-century mathematics, it's actually trying to
explain it all in a jargon-free conversational style, written as if you were
having a parlor conversation about numbers. "Consider three whole numbers,
such that the sum of the square of the first two equals the third", etc. This
does not scale well and is error-prone.

~~~
philh
> "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first
> two equals the third"

I wouldn't say that in conversation. I'd say something like: "consider three
integers, with a squared plus b squared equals c".

And in writing, I'd go for something like: "consider a, b, c ∈ ℤ, such that a²
+ b² = c". Which isn't far off.

------
kiyoto
This reminded me of an interview of David Foster Wallace

"...here’s this fundamental difference that comes up in freshman comp and
haunts you all the way through teaching undergrads: there is a fundamental
difference between expressive writing and communicative writing. One of the
biggest problems in terms of learning to write, or teaching anybody to write,
is getting it in your nerve endings that the reader cannot read your mind.
That what you say isn’t interesting simply because you, yourself, say it.
Whether that translates to a feeling of obligation to the reader I don’t know,
but we’ve all probably sat next to people at dinner or on public transport who
are producing communication signals but it’s not communicative expression.
It’s expressive expression, right? And actually it’s in conversation that you
can feel most vividly how alienating and unpleasant it is to feel as if
someone is going through all the motions of communicating with you but in
actual fact you don’t even need to be there at all."

"Conversations with David Foster Wallace" (Literary Conversations Series, page
113

A big thing that pg seems to be unaware is that most of us are expressive, not
communicative, when we talk. Stylistically, it's true that plain English is
the way to go. However, the deeper problem lies in our (in)ability to
communicate our thoughts, in writing or in speech.

------
OJFord
I think this is rubbish advice.

I'd much rather we all spoke on first attempt like we write after thoughtful
review.

I'm reminded of the (gradual) removal of all Latin from British legislation
with a view to making it more 'accessible', at the obvious expense of the
concise preciseness that the language afford: "with having changed the things
requiring changing" is rather less economical than "mutatis mutandis".

In a slightly facetious sort of way, I also think the "thanks to .. for
reading drafts of this" is rather amusing.

~~~
rdancer
> "thanks to .. for reading drafts of this"

What's the Latin for that?

~~~
OJFord
Ha! Mine's not strong enough to say, though I suspect it would only be 3-4
words ('with-thanks-to .. for-the-reading-of' if you see what I mean).

I didn't mean that sentence amused me for uneconomical English, but that it
was funny to think about a piece titled 'write like you talk' going through
multiple draft stages.

~~~
eecks
Why is that funny to you when he suggested putting your writing through draft
stages to try achieve the "write like you talk" style?

~~~
OJFord
Because when you talk you do not (and indeed cannot) do that.

(I would argue preparing a speech does not count, since you are then by
definition talking like you have written).

~~~
eecks
The point is that your written text reads like someone talking. It makes sense
to review the text for this aim.

------
reirob
"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?" ..."

The trick that works for me is setting the font-color to be the same as the
background color, blak on black for example. Then you can write without being
able to go back and correct what you've written. With the result, that you
will write almost the way as you speak. Requires touch typing though.

I even made a colorscheme for Vim for this and using it when writing in my
diary or personal emails. Does wonders.

------
mattlutze
> _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 is the key bit. It's not so much "write like you talk" and more "write
like you could present it."

So much writing isn't accessible because the author misses this cardinal rule.
Even the most dense, formal scientific writing can be made clearer if the
author or editor reads it aloud and fixes the awkward parts.

I helped content editing for an academic journal back in the day. A big part
of our jobs was helping the authors bring their voice out into the papers. A
lot of writers, novice and expert alike, have an idea of what an "expert" in
their field should sound like. The result is stiff and manufactured prose that
too often ends up being inaccessible for anyone else.

But, as soon as you clue an author in on how their personal voice can come
through an article, you see a shift in the quality and clarity of the work.

The articles, text books and other writing I learn the best from, and come
back to, ultimately sound in my head as if the author and I are speaking
aloud. It's the real differentiator in sounding like an amateur or an expert.

------
archildress
Seth Godin said something really similar, and I've drawn on it during periods
of writer's block many times:

>No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he
has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits,
until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

Why then, is writer's block endemic?

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking
without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back
to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

~~~
pshc
... I think I might have talker's block.

------
sgustard
Here's a transcript of a Paul Graham speech.

[http://genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive-
par...](http://genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive-parts-of-
startups-and-how-to-have-ideas-annotated)

So yeah, it's conversational in that he uses words like "noob" and "dude" and
"bullshit". And yes, Google finds examples of his written works that use these
words too.

But not everyone talks like Paul; perhaps Neil Oliver says things like
"mercurial Spaniard" when he talks. It's kind of a nice feature of language
that different people can use words differently. I'd rather Paul's examples
were more of the corporate anti-speak variety like "maximizing synergies" and
the like.

~~~
pmjordan
Agreed, it seems a really poor example used to make a fair point. I've never
spoken to Neil Oliver personally, but on TV programmes he presents (Coast,
etc.) he certainly uses flowery, poetic language. I don't think it's an act,
it seems to come naturally to him, and it doesn't even clash with the
presenters of other segments using a much more conversational tone.

------
jfaucett
The thing keeping me from agreeing with this is a qualifier. If it were "write
like you talk when writing a X", where X could be substituted by tutorial,
essay, lesson, etc. I think I'd be more inclined not to disagree here. But as
it stands "write like you talk" cannot hold true across the board for the set
of all writing goals that exists.

For example just watch any Tarantino film (or read the scripts), none of those
characters talk like Tarantino does, I really would not want to watch a film
where Uma Thurman walks around talking like him either.

Entire fields of writing would not exists if this statement were true: Poetry,
Rap, Music, Marketing slogans ("Think Different"), many types of Comedy, etc.

EDIT: After a reread it looks he does suggest a qualifier, which is basically
the general use case, which appears to be when "you want people to read and
understand what you write" ie. informative essays, tutorials, emails that
would occur in normal or every day communication situations, in which case I
would agree.

------
devinhelton
PG is on to something here, which is that when most people try to make their
prose better, they do it the wrong way. They make the language stilted, they
add silly descriptions (such as "the mercurial Spaniard"). But, writing is
different from speech, and you can learn techniques specifically to make your
writing better. I highly recommend Steven Pinker's new book "The Sense of
Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century"
[http://amzn.to/1LVI7eJ](http://amzn.to/1LVI7eJ) He has many concrete tips for
improving your writing.

------
colund
Paul Graham says "ummm" a lot. Luckily for us he doesn't write like he talks.

However, as others have said, the important thing is to write naturally and
with clarity to get the message across.

------
ruricolist
If you can't say "mercurial Spaniard" to your friends, get new friends.

~~~
jschwartzi
I find that if I need to use a word like mercurial it helps to add a four-
letter word in proximity. It seems to aid digestion and thus cuts down on the
commentary.

~~~
Shog9
Certainly makes it more conversational. If I had a nickle for every time I've
heard someone mutter "damn hg"...

------
joonoro
I've heard of this advice before [0] and I really think it's very useful
advice. The goal isn't to make your writing literally spoken language and add
every "um" and "ah" to your text, but to make it sound like someone _might_
actually say that and that it sounds like natural speech. Like pg said, you
wouldn't look at your friends weirdly for that. It's too easy to fall into the
trap of trying to "decorate" your text with fancy words and language but as
the example shows it feels artificial and alienates the reader. "Write like
you talk."

[0] I think it was The Elements of Style, but you should go read that anyways
because it's like K&R for English. There's a lot of examples of how the ear is
much better at deciding which kind of language to use than you are.

------
idlewords
If you're interested in becoming a better non-fiction writer, I can't over-
recommend William Zinsser's "On Writing Well".

~~~
haraball
The only downside from reading and learning from this book is that you
suddenly discover how much bad writing there is out there. ;)

------
stillsut
I prefer to write like a man reading his powerpoint slides verbatim

~~~
mcnamaratw
Hueh! And that's how I naturally talk, too.

------
bbarn
I had to look up "abstruse". I understood it's meaning from context, but
wasn't sure if it was a portmanteau of abstract and obtuse, or an actual word.
I've honestly never heard it in my life, and wouldn't stop someone saying it
in a sentence, but it did stop my reading.

That made me wonder, does the fact that you sometimes have to listen to the
spoken word over-estimate the impact the same words will have when written?

~~~
dredwerker
Abstruse - Big in the early 1800s according to the Google Ngram Viewer.
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=abstruse&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cabstruse%3B%2Cc0)

------
baoha
It's good that PG didn't follow his own rule, otherwise we would have seen
lots of "hmm" in his texts.

~~~
pjscott
Sounds like you've heard him talk, then. Listen to where he says "umm", and
the tone, and how the audience reacts: those are _punctuation_. In writing
they become paragraph breaks or dashes or periods or commas or just strongly
implied pauses after emphasized words.

It's an unusual way of punctuating things, but it seems to work okay.

------
dot
I 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.

------
meow_mix
Writing style is an aesthetic: It should suit the subject matter. I wouldn't
want to read Tolstoy in _the athletic clothing of ideas_. The article feels
like an overgeneralization.

------
justsee
> But just imagine calling Picasso "the mercurial Spaniard" when talking to a
> friend.

Consider the UK talking heads landscape is filled with individuals with a
formidable command of the English language and pg's example comes across as
very parochial and culturally ignorant.

Perhaps the essay should be 'Write like _I_ talk', because I can't imagine how
he would deal with an episode of QI with Stephen Fry holding forth.

------
baddox
> You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas.

I think that precision and clarity are top concerns, but I don't conflate
precision and clarity with simplicity or colloquialism. It's strictly true
that you don't _need_ complex sentences to express complex ideas, but I think
that complex sentences provide more precision and clarity for complex ideas.
As always, know your audience—I don't dispute that there will always be demand
for simple digestible explanations of extremely complex ideas (e.g.
theoretical physics).

> 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.

No, but I suspect that when they need the utmost precision and clarity, they
_write_ , and I suspect they write rather complex sentences. I saw a recent
interview where a U.S Supreme Court justice mentioned that a huge portion of
the work that goes on while deliberating a case is _written_ , even though the
justices are presumably on speaking terms and are quite capable of getting
together and discussing things verbally.

------
bambax
Writing and talking are two very different things; it's bad advice to tell
people to write as they talk. What makes talking and writing so very different
are, at least, that:

1) Writing is a monologue; talking is a conversation. It's extremely rare one
would talk in the form of monologue, except when giving a speech (and even in
that case, the audience can usually ask questions).

2) When talking with someone, you have an immense array of non-verbal
communication tools at your disposal (body language, eye contact, hands
movements, speed of talking, pauses, etc. etc. etc.); in writing you have none
of those, so everything you want to say, you have to write down.

Of course one should use simple, usual words, and (maybe) short sentences. But
that has to be the oldest "tip" there is, in any language; there's even a .gov
website dedicated to it:
[http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuide...](http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuidelines/writeShort.cfm)

------
mhartl
One important difference between written and spoken language is that in the
former case readers have the luxury of looking words up in a dictionary if
they don't know them. When speaking, I'm careful to avoid words I suspect
might not be understood by my listeners, but when writing [1] I generally use
the most precise word I can think of, even if I expect some readers won't know
it. (Indeed, for particularly tricky words I'll often link the dictionary
definition myself.)

[1]: Examples include
[http://railstutorial.org/book](http://railstutorial.org/book),
[http://tauday.com/tau-manifesto](http://tauday.com/tau-manifesto), and
[http://learnenough.com/command-line-tutorial](http://learnenough.com/command-
line-tutorial)

------
archagon
On the contrary, I write _because_ I don't talk so well. When I try to explain
an idea in person, it usually comes out jumbled and half-formed. In contrast,
when I sit down to write it out, it becomes much more clear on both sides of
the conversation, even if it sounds a bit robotic.

Many people I know are exceptionally good at talking precisely and at length
about their interests. Sometimes I envy them. I've always wished I could spin
out my thoughts at their speed. But I don't really think in sentences. Many of
my ideas exist in a sort of impressionistic cloud that takes a lot of energy
to translate into conversation. In that sense, writing is as much a form of
physical thought as it is a tool of idea dissemenation.

Nonetheless, it's an interesting exercise to record a first draft of a long
essay into a microphone and mine it for intersting bits of prose. I should
really try it more often!

------
unclesaamm
Rather than taking writing advice from a programmer/venture capitalist, I
recommend Steering the Craft, by Ursula Le Guin, which will help ground any
writing you might do in solid understanding of the "tools" you have available
as a writer-- pace, grammar, the sound of words, and so forth

~~~
philwelch
pg was a published technical writer and widely read essayist before Y
Combinator.

~~~
unclesaamm
which is perhaps why he can "write as he talks", and get away with it. He
honed his craft. I work with a few programmers who write exactly as they talk,
and it is littered with misplaced, dangling modifiers, and misspellings of
things like "bury the lead" vs "bury the lede". The overall structure of
arguments is haphazard too. Writing is hard, and I think the best way to get
better is to write things that you _want_ to get taken more seriously than
just as if you were talking.

~~~
wfo
He can get away with it because he founded the company that owns this well-
respected discussion forum; he can say whatever he wants and people will at
the very least read it. It is a credit to his hard work in the industry and
the even harder industry of online community-building that the community
surrounding Y Combinator can sniff out a truly bad essay like this one
(especially difficult when so many of his essays are so excellent) and call
him out on it as they generally have here.

------
triplesec
PG is writing about getting people to read your nonfiction words. There is a
place for other things, but he's talking about getting across a simple
message, or making comprehensible more complex ones. In this, the advice, old
as the hills, is sage and useful.

However, he omits to say that for other purposes, and other audiences - like
this one, for example - if you want a nuances, thoughtful and colourful
conversation, exploring more layers of meaning and implication, don't just use
the ten hundred words people use the most often.
[https://xkcd.com/1133/](https://xkcd.com/1133/) For if you do, once the XKCD
comedy is over, we end up in a very dull Newspeak place indeed.

------
visakanv
The best part of PG's advice is actually this:

> "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."

This is the single best thing you can do to improve your communication skills,
whether it be in writing or speaking. You're forced, out of courtesy and
respect for your friend, to find the heart of the matter and you make it
accessible.

(I'm currently in the middle of a 1,000,000 words stream-of-consciousness
writing project, where I write exactly whatever's coming to my mind with as
little editing as possible. I'm approaching 500,000 words now. It's pretty
enlightening.)

------
nemoniac
In fairness, Neil Oliver talks like that all the time. If I were having a chat
with him over a pint and he described someone as a "mercurial Spaniard", I
wouldn't bat an eyelid.

------
vinayak147
Writing something (that is worth reading) in simple words is very hard. I
believe that clear thinking plays a bigger role than semantics. When I am
confused about a topic, I tend to write about it using complex arguments with
long sentences and long words.

PG speaks and writes about startups with more clarity than most people. It is
because his thinking on startups has greater clarity/conviction than most
people. From my perspective, there seems to be no shortcut or semantic trick
to clear writing.

------
pervycreeper
The hardest thing about communication is clarity.

~~~
mcnamaratw
Yes. Clarity can creep up on you, and before you know it people can find your
mistakes.

------
urs2102
I'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

~~~
_delirium
Opposite to you, I'm often wary of conversational writing for exactly that
reason: "Attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are". Especially a
certain style of very breezy, self-assured conversational writing, that
doesn't have any nuance or caveats, and hand-waves over anything too technical
or specific.

Writers use that style to lay things out "like they really are". Let's boil
down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters. No Harvard footnotes
and overcomplicating things here, just straight talk. Malcolm Gladwell and
David Brooks are effective users of that style of writing. Quite a few
bloggers are, too. It produces this strange style that on the surface seems
thoughtful, but doesn't really have much there.

~~~
urs2102
> Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters.

You actually be may be right - this Gladwell style of writing is usually quite
dangerous, because it does give the reader the sense that they really know
what they are talking about, because they are "getting to what matters" (which
is obviously very subjective).

The one thing I will argue though is that simple writing communicates the
author's point more effectively than using flowerly language. The writer may
be wrong, but at least I have much clearer sense of what they mean. By getting
to "what matters", I find it easier to determine that they have "what matters"
wrong. It is easier to refute the central thesis if the argument is presented
without cruft, rather than an argument where flowery prose clouds the thesis.

I find that a mix of a conversational tone followed by technical details is
usually the most effective for me. It's one of the reasons I appreciate
mathematics within writing - it tends to be much more clear.

Although I do think you are right about Gladwell & Co, I am refering more to
MBA-speak - which tends to use large empty words to convey ideas which pretend
to have more depth than they really do.

------
DigitalSea
Unless you are naturally a great speaker, writing like you talk is bad advice
in my opinion. I, for example would sound erratic and incoherent if I wrote
how I talked. I sometimes say things without thinking quite a lot. At least
when I write, I can think about things more clearly, research what I am saying
and get my facts straight.

I usually agree with most of what you say PG, but in this instance I think
you're wrong. Still, it was an interesting read nonetheless.

------
etanol
Spoken language is backed by other optional channels of information:

* Audio: speaker controls tone, speed and emphasis

* Video: body language

* Feedback: listener can acknowledge reception or ask for repetition

Written language has more time to be composed and it usually has the
possibility of being ammended before submission.

Therefore, I always considered natural the difference between spoken and
written language styles.

On a less picky opinion: agreed, complex ideas should not be written in
complex language.

------
ebt
This whole idea and article leave me speechless (sic).

Talking and writing are two different mediums. Never heard of Marshall
MacLuhan?

I curse a lot, at home, where I live alone. As soon as I step out the door I
talk differently to my neighbors. I also adopt a different voice when I visit
my family in another state. And then another when talking to co-workers.

So which of those should I write in?

Try putting "fucking" in the HN search bar. The top article I get is "Fucking
Sue Me" with 689 points. Great.

I can't begin to express how irritating it is to read such articles/blog posts
with "fucking" all over the text, even thought at home I probably say that
word 10-20 times a day. But I'm not _writing_ that for others to read.

And then we have this gem from PG:

"Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas."

Really? If I talked like that to my friends or co-workers they'd be laughing
at me for days.

To "write like I talk" I'd say: "what an arrogant fucking stupid shit
statement."

Good bye HN.

~~~
visakanv
Bye! All the best.

------
birbal
"Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas" The irony in this
sentence from the article is breathtaking.

~~~
logicallee
Do you mean because it's a great sentence in the context of this essay (maybe
the best one in it), but you judge that you couldn't get away with saying it
verbatim in conversation?

(If you were explaining the idea in this essay?) Or please explain.

~~~
birbal
I actually love the sentence but I wouldn't expect it in spoken english. (That
part is ironical in the sense that it goes against the core of the article..
Seems like an exception that proves the rule). Written word gives the reader
more time to absorb the content than spoken word and hence I feel it is OK to
use metaphorical language to make the point and make the reading experience
delightful. But Paul's point is well taken that it's better not to use flowery
language for most of the time. It takes a lot of skill to not go overboard
with that thing.

~~~
logicallee
Yes, you make a good point. Also, since the reader can glance up and down the
page, you don't have to repeat parts you have just stated very clearly, to
make sure they're still with you, as you might while you talk. (You can do it
briefly however.) In all, I expect my books to sound quite different from
spoken conversation, for a variety of reasons.

------
mch82
I often keep revising until a text-to-speech program is able to read my
writing in a way that sounds natural. Following that approach led to great
results in university writing courses and, recently, got me through the
process of writing and officiating a wedding.

I share this because many of the comments respond to the "write like you
speak" advice with statements similar to "I don't speak well, so 'write like
you talk' won't work for me". We spend every day of our lives consuming spoken
language and reading written language to ourselves and, as a result, we are
able to recognize speech that sounds clear and well spoken. Even if you
struggle to speak improvisationally, listening to what you've written can help
to evaluate the understandability and flow of your writing.

------
ninjakeyboard
Depends on the tone that you want to set. For a blog etc I think
conversationalist tone is fine. Even fast design docs can benefit from a
conversationalist tone. Trying to write a big technical design doc w/ that
tone wouldn't fit though IMO so you have to evaluate case by case.

------
0898
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Warren Buffett – he's a great 'write like you
talk' role model. He explains complex ideas in a folksy, down to earth way. I
studied 50 years of his annual letters, and there's probably 13 or 14
techniques he uses to make people read what he writes. (If you're interested,
my short book Write Like Warren is free on Leanpub:
[https://leanpub.com/writelikewarren](https://leanpub.com/writelikewarren))

Edit: Dropbox link – [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/um4djdcdb5isw6y/AAAzF6Xm-
PGrkJT3Z...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/um4djdcdb5isw6y/AAAzF6Xm-
PGrkJT3ZuJw6LQca?dl=0)

------
orthoganol
I agree with pg, but I do think he could be more open minded to critical
theory kind of stuff in the humanities. Yeah a lot of it is truly terrible to
read, just following some weirdly abstract chain of logic that leads
nowhere... but some of it is actually pretty enlightening or at least makes
you think about things more critically, in ways that are ultimately useful.
For me the good stuff are the thinkers fleshing out the position that Hegel
introduced, which arguably is still the shadow that philosophy lives in. I'm
CS, not humanities, but even so I see a lot of connections between developing
philosophy and improving society, and a lot of these contemporary thinkers
blend in philosophy of mind which could be useful for AI.

------
dreeves
Funny, I just wrote "The Out-Loud-To-Your-Friend-Constraint For Writing" \--
[http://expost.padm.us/outloud](http://expost.padm.us/outloud) (It's kind of
self-indulgent musing on the idea of constraints for writing.)

And for customer support we call this the BFF Heuristic --
[http://blog.beeminder.com/curtain](http://blog.beeminder.com/curtain)

Excerpt: "If you read what you've written to a user out loud and it's possible
to tell that it's not being spoken to your best friend, rewrite it. No
exaggeration -- I treat that as a hard rule. It also helps get replies out
quicker, once you're used to it."

~~~
err4nt
This is really great advice and I meant to hit tbe up arrow friend, but I'm
not sure which arrow I tapped and now I can't see or correct it :/

I really like the idea of the BFF heuristic, but I also think people should
try to read writing, especially emails, as though they are coming from a BFF
too! I've seen time after time where a friend reads an email, and each time
they reread it theh get more angry, but when I look at it there's no offense
to be found. If you have a negative opinion of somebody its easy to read
everything theh write as a personal attack

~~~
dreeves
Absolutely. In fact, that's the next piece of advice in that blog post.
Excerpt:

"The best-friend heuristic has another benefit: If a user is ever frustrated
or annoyed or hostile, put on rose-colored glasses and willfully reinterpret
their tone as helpful and constructive -- something your friend would say
because they genuinely want to help you improve -- and respond with the
appropriate tone of gratitude."

------
firebones
Write like you think, not like you talk.

I do not talk like I think. Something is broken in that pathway. I'm better at
writing. I've watched my son, who has trouble writing, express himself for
papers via Dragon Dictate. Literally "write like you talk". And it is a mess.
Stream of consciousness, betting on the reader picking up social cues, etc.

It is rare to find someone who can both write and talk with the same words and
phrasing.

Although I do agree with the post in the sense of "don't stilt your prose".
Don't adopt someone else's written voice, or a perceived style. (If you have
the skills to do that, you have the skills to write better...so do that
instead.)

------
pedalpete
How about documentation? I was thinking about this the other day, as I was
documenting an api, and I was writing as if I was speaking, explaining how I
thought about the problem rather than just the end-point details.

How do people feel about this.

Here's an example, but I didn't push the updates I made yesterday.
[https://github.com/favor/it](https://github.com/favor/it)

When I wrote for the high school paper, people always commented on how my
writing was as if I was just having an conversation with them, so I've always
tried to write that way, but I'm not sure it works for all formats.

~~~
amk_
The linked documentation bounces between using 'I' and 'you' as subjects for
examples. Get rid of the references to yourself in the docs -- the
documentation should be neutral. Take the reader's perspective if a subject is
required. In day to day business like setting development priorities or
responding to issues on Github, you can use 'I'.

~~~
pedalpete
thanks for the feedback, I just wasn't sure about tone in docs, it's the first
time I've really had to document something like this for public consumption. I
will redo it.

------
skybrian
I like this sort of conversational writing style and it's my preferred style
as well. But it's not actually much like natural speech. Anyone who's tried
transcribing a recording of a conversation knows that they need to be cleaned
up quite a lot to be readable. We don't actually talk in essay format.

Writing this way takes practice and probably a lot of reading as well to
understand what you can get away with. People don't start out just knowing how
to do it. Many people's native dialects are pretty far away from this style,
so "write like you talk" wouldn't have the same results for them.

------
aaronbrethorst
Like pg, I'd recommend you read your writing out loud to yourself. _Not_ read
it back to yourself, but literally read it out loud. I find this to be, by
far, the easiest way to catch awkward turns of phrase and the like.

Jargon and highfalutin words should also be avoided whenever possible. For
instance, if you have the choice of using either "abstruse" or "obscure," I
recommend choosing "obscure" every time. Plain-spoken English ftw.

(I also find it wonderfully ironic that pg chose such an obscure synonym for
"obscure" to represent the word obscure. bravo.)

------
helgeman
I think it always depends on what your intention of communication is. Like it
is said in the article. Most of the time you want to communicate to others
what you are thinking. The simpler the better. I guess there is a similarity
to writing code. Your machine can only handle exact commands for
communication. But in human-to-human interaction there is more. Sometimes you
want others to start thinking about something. Put an image in their head.
Draw a comparison to let them think of the bigger picture.I dont think for
that purpose spoken language is always the best way.

------
incepted
More useful would be "talk like you write".

The best speakers are the ones who are best at that because of the mental
discipline it imposes: no uh, er, ah or pauses, just grammatically correct
sentences, all the time.

------
darkr
The crux of this argument was explored with more eloquence and substance by
Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language[1].

I also agree with some of Orwell's critics, that these rules only hold water
for pursuasive and/or [mildly] polemic writing, which is largely the style of
tech blogging. Personally I would like to see more tech writing in the Joycean
tradition.

1:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Lan...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language)

------
Jemmeh
I think a lot of people are missing the point. The point isn't to be redundant
and write in verbatim transcriptions. The point is to speak simply, as most
people would out loud. Communication is about getting your point across.

A lot of people will write in a very formal "I am fluffing up my school essay"
style which distances the reader, makes the topic more boring, and in my
opinion actually makes the writing harder for most people to comprehend. You
have to pause and think as opposed to just naturally getting through what
you're being told.

------
gbog
"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."

Well no, it is very hard to write a text in "spoken language". This has been
analysed by many writers, and the master of this operation in French language
is Céline. He says that a lot of minute tweaking is required in order to
produce the effect of spoken language in the reader's mind.

And this has not very much to do with removing the "litterature" from one's
script, which is obviously much easier.

------
rplnt
At first I thought of a talk as in presentation. That would be funny advice
considering how terrible speaker he is (which is a shame because it's just the
form that's bad, not the content). But going off from that, I think people
tend to talk like that in general conversations and it only stands out in
presentations.. or on a paper. So not the best advice in my opinion. What I
would take from it is to just not overdo it when you are writing.

------
Houshalter
I found a very useful tool for writing clearer:
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

------
subdane
“Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn’t sound like a
news robot but, in fact, sounds like a real person having the reactions a real
person would.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/fashion/npr-voice-has-
take...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/fashion/npr-voice-has-taken-over-
the-airwaves.html)

------
ff_
A quite common way of saying in Italy is: "Parla come magni", which literally
means "Speak the way you eat" [1], and it is used in conversations to mean
exactly what Paul says, to "keep it simple".

[1]: [http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/parla-come-
mangi.1975...](http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/parla-come-
mangi.197573/)

------
sarreph
Perhaps a reason why this works so well is due to most people's way of
_subvocalizing_ [1] material that they read.

If you're saying an article out loud in your head as you read it, then it sure
does make sense for it to sound like an actual voice is saying it!

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization)

------
SZJX
He talks as if fiction and all kinds of literature don't exist, as if writing
is only useful for conveying advice and commentary. This particular kind of
writing might suit him well but this is not how it works in general. His idea
that only "poetry" and some "bogus end of humanities" need complex prose is
narrow. Also formal reports are more formal than usual for a reason.

------
criddell
I wish I could talk like I write. When I have a lot to talk about, I have a
hard time not jumping around and end up being a little incoherent.

------
tamaatar
For general day to day stuff we all write, yes I agree. Hate reading emails
and articles with a lot of unnecessary jargon. However, Writing- as in writing
fiction,poetry,drama etc is an art. Just like a great painting, it is complex
and it gives people an idea of the great mind of the author and what he
thought of the book from his perspective.

Imagine war and peace written in spoken language.:(

------
rokhayakebe
Well "if truth was self evidence, eloquence wouldn't be needed."

Most of the time, we should write simply, but there are many times when we
should be more colorful.

Also the fact that we must choose simple writing is a shortcoming and a lack
of proper education. If the only word I know to express a romantic feeling is
"love," well that is going to seriously limit me.

------
incepted
> Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write
> in spoken language.

Speaking of doing what you preach: stop adding manual <br> in your articles,
it makes them unreadable on mobile and wide monitors and it basically displays
a total ignorance of how the web is supposed to work (let readers control how
your articles appear to them).

~~~
charlesism
"How the web is supposed to work" changes every five seconds. <br> is one of
the oldest tags in HTML. Maybe it's wrong this year. I remember the year when
Tables were wrong, too.

~~~
incepted
The point remains that you should let the browser reflow the text based on the
width of the browser.

<br> makes this impossible.

------
noir-york
To the contrary, I explicitly do not write the way I talk; they are very
different mediums! Each is better suited to communicate different things /
emotions.

Writing gives me the freedom to edit, iterate and polish; something speech
cannot do.

I love both writing and speech/presenting - do not be reductionist and reduce
writing to mere "written conversation".

~~~
gus_massa
I think you are taking the article too literally.

It's not that you must say something orally, use a computer automatic
transcript and publish that, with all the errors and fillers.

You should edit it heavily to fix errors and increase clarity, but the style
should be like something you would say oraly. An uninformed reader must feel
that it's just the transcript of an informal talk.

------
yomritoyj
Paul Halmos in _How to Write Mathematics_ says: “A good attitude to the
preparation of written mathematical exposition is to pretend that it is
spoken. Pretend that you are explaining the subject to a friend on a long walk
in the woods, with no paper available; fall back on symbolism only when it is
really necessary.”

------
orionlogic
I would say this is true, because whenever i read a PG essay, i think of his
voice, thinking his talks. His uniqe voice, tonality and speed of spoken
language into his writings, which in turn helps me to better understand what
he syas. I always wanted to hear PG essays from his voice. Like an Audible for
PG essays.

------
zzzbra
I understand where this is coming from. All the same I find its devaluation of
the variation of language one can naturally access when writing both dangerous
and simpleminded in its utilitarian assumptions. It's a strawman argument.
Writing is a creative act and not simply a matter of communication.

------
adambard
I think that, like, um, when you... when you write things like, uh, you know,
fantasy novels or, uhhh.. things that are literature, that you should probably
ignore this advice.

On the other hand, if you're writing nonfiction, with the goal of conveying
information effectively, then this is probably good advice.

------
xacaxulu
Considering that communication can be just as much about what you say as how
you say it, I'd say that I appreciate artistic liberties like 'mercurial
Spaniard'. Writing can be a form of direct communication as well as a refined
art form. I enjoy the departure from the usual lexicon.

------
bikeshack
Just ran Paul's article through Anonymouth
[https://github.com/psal/anonymouth](https://github.com/psal/anonymouth)
Considerably changed and mangled beyond all recognition. It even sounds less
persuasive in tone.

------
ckaygusu
Generalizing: "Representation of ideas done in any form should be done in a
way that impairs as little cognitive load as possible on the reader".

This principle goes in programming, as well as in writing. But not all writing
is done to transmit ideas, there is also aesthetic side of it.

------
ivan_ah
Something that helps a lot with achieving a conversational tone is to actually
record "spoken drafts" of what you want to write about, then transcribe the
audio.

For optimal results, have a point-form plan of what you want to discuss so you
will stay on topic and avoid rambling.

------
SonicSoul
my favorite advice on writing form Scot Adams:

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html)

------
joseakle
when i first read Saramago [1], i was impressed how he wrote with no
punctuation or even capital letters, and how enjoyable and easy to read it
was, it was definitely a breath of fresh air, only a few times it was hard to
follow the story, mainly on dialogues i sometimes got lost who was saying
what, overall his writing style made reading his novels a lot of fun, my
feeling was more like listening to someone tell me a story directly, rather
than having to get hold of the rhythm and style of the writer.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago)

------
munificent
Ugh, I agree with the sentiment, but the proposed solution is almost as
awkward as the prose he descries. I agree with Paul that "fancy", "formal"
prose like this is (randomly chosen example) does no one any favors:

    
    
        > This work aims to address the disconnect between object-oriented design
        > and implementation by rethinking the way object-oriented languages are
        > structured. We have developed a set of requirements with which to identify
        > good relationship models, and used these requirements to develop a
        > new model for the object-oriented paradigm which focuses on relationships
        > rather than objects. We will test the effectiveness of the model by designing
        > a language which uses it, along with a formal specification and a
        > practical implementation for the language. We will measure the effectiveness
        > of our model by conducting case studies comparing development in
        > existing languages with development in our relationship-based language.
    

But saying that the _only_ solution is to write how you speak informally to
friends also eliminates prose like:

    
    
        > The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops
        > of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen
        > American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars.
    

I don't think Anthony Doerr uses phrases like "mouths of mortars" when having
beer with his friends, but his prose is an absolute work of art. Every single
word and dollop of punctuation there is perfect.

The key part is not to write like you are speaking to your friends. It's to
write _like you are speaking to a specific audience._ Have a picture in your
mind of yourself speaking in a venue to one or more people. The image you have
will dramatically affect the way you right.

Picture yourself giving a hollering a rousing speech to a platoon of soldiers
about to enter into battle and your reader will hear the Battle Hymn of the
Republic by the time they reach the end of your paragraph. Whisper your words
into the ear of a lover and your reader will get the shivers.

For most of the writing we on HN do, sure, "explaining something cool to your
friends over lunch" is exactly the right image to get your style in line. But
it's a massive over-simplification to say _all_ prose should be written with
tat venue in mind.

Personally, I think "mercurial Spaniard" is a great description of Picasso.

------
fisk
I don't know about "write like you talk", precisely, but I've noticed that
some very good writing on technical subjects reads like you could give it as a
talk, so there's something there about clarity.

------
ust
On an unrelated note - orthography...
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Adelung](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Adelung)

------
simondedalus
this is true in general, but it bears noting that highly specialized fields
need jargon. there's nothing wrong with using a word "in a technical sense,"
nor is there anything wrong with leaning on connotation to help orient your
interlocutor.

writing and speaking are like anything else: use the right tool for the job.
when i talk to people outside of analytic philosophy, i can't use various
technical terms to talk about wittgenstein's thoughts on language. i _can_
talk about them, but it takes longer. like, a lot longer.

------
bikeshack
So I should talk in Legal English all day?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English)
which is the reverse of writing as one talks, because the Rule of Law
surrounds us always, except for the criminals who flout it repeatedly
throughout their day.

When I write, I self censor all the time, and it is no different when I talk.
We forgive and forget. We silo only certain words to certain areas of the
world. "What happens in Vegas" etc. Language only becomes a problem when it is
committed permanently to the footnotes of the web. You can't overlook the law
aspect. You also can't so easily withdraw a statement said online.

------
LordHumungous
Hemingway had a thing or two to say about this.

>I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away
and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.

------
g0v
I think there is absolutely a place and time for writing the way you talk and
that the same goes for writing formally.

The discussion of when and where for either case is a topic in and of itself.

------
callmeed
Considering how many people now say the work "like" at least twice per
sentence (especially young people), I don't think this is good advice without
some caveats.

------
grandalf
It's not _exactly_ how you talk.

It's just not flowery and embellished and wandering.

People really don't read. They don't care. They don't have time.

Keep it simple and they might read part of it.

------
kitd
The funny thing is that Neil Oliver really does talk like that.

------
strathmeyer
You can use Google-Translate to read your writing back to you.

~~~
mcnamaratw
Good point. Sounds obvious now that you point it out but I hadn't thought of
it.

------
sparrish
Please don't write like you talk. It's bad enough having to listen to them, I
don't want to have to read the expletives as well.

------
teachingaway
This x 10 for legal documents. Simplify them please.

~~~
optionalparens
I agree, simplifying would be great. You do realize, however, that a large
part of the legal profession is to intentionally write broadly, imprecisely,
and flexibly to avoid traps. Other kinds of legal writing are intentionally
precise in some clauses so as to add complexity to deliberately avoid
immediate comprehension.

~~~
grandalf
In the manner of discourse such as you have exemplified with your comments
under your current pseudonym, it is difficult to ascertain your intended trop,
voice, or topic. Thus, I hereby request that you rephrase in a more course or
colloquial or blunt manner.

~~~
optionalparens
Your sense of humor is dizzying and perhaps difficult to find.

If you want more blunt - I speak multiple languages at native or near native
level, including two since birth. Spoken English, especially by your average
American is rarely to the point, clear, and pleasant. Don't write like you
speak, because the average person sucks at it. Instead, know your subject and
audience and write to them. Avoid overgeneralizing because it's easy to make
an ass of yourself like PG.

Regarding legalese, it is hard to understand and that is intentional. Could it
be any clearer for you or will you down-vote again?

------
rquantz
To all the valid criticisms of the actual advice in the article, I'd like to
add that pg's gratuitous poke at gender studies, of all things, was
unnecessary. He could have made his same (wrong) point about academia without
including that term. His inclusion of "gender" as a marker for "bogus"
humanities shows more about his privileged, white cisgender male perspective
than about his subject.

This guy is a "thought leader" for the startup community. Congratulations.

------
SarahofGaia
If anything, I need to talk like how I write. I'm a writer, not a talker: I'm
verbose in speech, but concise in text.

------
cloudhead
Yes, as long as you aren't writing about emotion or sensation or philosophy or
psychology or anything deeply human.

------
xiaoma
I'm really torn on this one. In the abstract, I agree with the main argument
of this essay. However, it saddens me to see PG planning to write more like he
speaks. His writing is so good that it's been life changing for me, but I only
find his talks mediocre. It truly would be a pity if he took his own advice to
heart and lost some of the essay-writing awesome sauce.

------
thedevil
This is a no-brainer.

At first, I thought it's not worthy of an essay because it's so obvious.

But then I read the comments.

~~~
thedevil
To clarify:

I don't think Paul Graham meant ramble, use "uhs" and "ums" and expletives as
some commenters have said.

I think the point was to use common and simple wording so that people can
understand without doing a lot of work. People have a lot more practice
understanding common and simple words. So it's much easier for them to read,
no matter how smart they are.

Using uncommon or complicated words makes you feel smart, and might make some
people think you're smart, but it makes your writing miserable work to read.

I think this was pretty clear in PG's essay, but the headline probably threw
people off. Maybe he should have said it differently, such as "Make your
writing as simple as your speech."

------
tempodox
“Write like I talk” would be the most surefire social-media-suicide method I
could think of.

------
whitneyrzoller
What's wrong with "mercurial Spaniard"?

------
Terr_
"Write how you _WISHED_ you talked."

------
artur_makly
i would love to! once technology actually allows me to do it. Dragon dictate
hasn't delivered yet. So who will?

------
bradezone
I couldn't disagree with this more.

------
eecks
Sound advice.

------
brudgers
_Write_

Writing for the audience is secondary to writing[1]. Graham's good at it after
25 years developing his writing _and_ cultivating an audiance.

Everything else is secondary to this when it comes to getting people to read
what I've written. The first writing I did that I thought was any good was on
_Critique of Pure Reason_ and I wrote that paper in the style of translated
Kant, which is to say that there were a lot of "which is to say that" which is
to say that "which is to say that" is not something I normally say in everyday
conversation, but that I find very helpful when I'm trying to explain
something complicated (and generalizes to a useful strategy at the end of
meetings to help insure that everybody talked about some of the same things
and hopefully it was the same things that were important).

And reading Kant shows that sometimes reading is hard work and that some
people enjoy it, and bringing pleasure into the world by writing is possible.
These days I sort of look to do that since why else would I write? Besides as
a way of thinking, of course.

I guess that means that perhaps Matz is on to something, write what makes you
happy. It sort of goes without saying that being nice is part of that and I've
come to realize that the part of being an internet asshole that was
pleasurable was the writing part and the part of that that was at the core of
being happy was _writing effectively_.

Now for some kinds of writing, being effective means using short blunt
sentences in the Hemmingway style. But fuck the man shot himself in the head,
and Shakespeare and Faulkner didn't. Not that it's statistical proof that
writing that way made him unhappy, but it obviously didn't make him happy
enough if it even made him happy at all.

Of course, I'm not PG, so people don't expect the sage advice about startups;
a good thing since his advice is really good. I'm just not sure his advice to
beginning authors is particularly sage since the works from his early career
as an author have the same "clam ice cream with reluctance" cleverness for the
sake of being clever that impedes simplicity but gives authors the joy of
playing with words that keeps them going forward like the nine iron over the
tree from the deep rough that sticks close to the hole brings bad duffers back
for more misery.

In other words, there's something to be said for stream of consciousness
writing and against being self conscious. Writing is a soliloquy, it's a
speech not a conversation: a sermon for the choir with only the hope that
people won't walk out as the level of attention that should be paid to the
non-audience.

For what it's worth, I had fun writing this, typos and all. I hope someone had
fun reading it. I also enjoy Graham's essays and books. I'd just simplify this
one.

[1]:
[http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm)

------
stullig
tl;dr

------
optionalparens
This has to be some of the worst advice I have seen on HN, an achievement in
itself. I have lurked here a long time and this article is so stupid and
poorly written I actually am taking the time to register.

Simplifying your writing is an effective technique for certain styles and
genres. Moreover, it is indeed true that some people speak more eloquently
than they write. Conversely, one must acknowledge that the opposite is true.
Advising people to write as they speak is overgeneralizing and even harmful in
many cases.

Anecdotally, I find most people do not speak very clearly. I grew up bilingual
and I find the average spoken English to be particularly imprecise and sloppy,
especially compared to other languages. Written English, on the other hand has
many subtleties, rules, structure, and formalities that aid most kinds of
writing. On a personal level, written English is far more pleasurable,
efficient, and expressive to me.

Again, there are some types of writing that can benefit from disregarding
formalities and drawing from spoken English. Dialogue is one obvious example
where the benefits of writing as one might speak can be an asset, however
Graham's article I suspect is not really trying to make you a better novelist.
Ironically, writing dialogue in ways that it might not be spoken often
produces more engaging content to anyone with even a passing appreciation for
skilled writing. It is precisely because characters might say something we
would never that we might find them intelligent, interesting, or find another
quality that makes us react strongly and in a polarizing way to a character.
The same holds true to other types of writing - we write a certain way to make
content clear, but also at times interesting, engaging, and fulfilling.

The problem with a lot of written English is that most people do not know
basics, let along actual writing techniques. Notice in Graham's article he
manages to commit dozens of mistakes despite revealing that someone else
proofread. For instance, Graham uses the same word twice in a row in his first
paragraph, writes redundantly in a crafted article about writing, and abuses
paragraphs. There are other mistakes as well, but the larger point is that
Graham is presenting himself as an authority on writing technique, and yet
would have received a poor grade from any of my teachers.

Lowering your writing standards and abusing the English language to address
inept or illiterate readers is not quality advice. Every writer must think of
their intended audience and indeed write towards them. Insulting your audience
by assuming they are stupid is not a solution. Rather, writing clearly by
reducing complexity is a well-explored topic that has few direct linkages to
spoken English and general vernacular, colloquialisms, and informalities. You
can find dozens of books on the subject and even algorithms that will process
your writing, searching for complexities.

As a final note, I now live abroad most of the year and encounter many
Americans, Brits, Aussies, and other "Anglo" ex-pats. I have fluency in the
local language and I often play the role of translator from spoken English to
non-Anglos, in English to people with near native level proficiency in
English. In other words, I translate English to English because so many people
do not speak clear, understandable, and engaging English. I rarely am asked
about written English from anyone remotely competent as writer. There is often
overlap between the two, such as in the workplace.

Paul Graham should be ashamed for providing such bad advice. I am sorry, but
this article comes off as lordly pseudo-academia from someone who may be a
decent investor but is surely not a good writer. I have been reading things
from Paul Graham for years and while the subjects sometimes are not bad, he is
a terrible writer. I can respect certain things about Graham, but his writing
and desire to abuse his position to spout nonsense is not one of them. Please
stick to investing hoards of cash and stop planting dangerous seeds in your
younger audience members in particular.

~~~
pavornyoh
>Paul Graham should be ashamed for providing such bad advice. I am sorry, but
this article comes off as lordly pseudo-academia from someone who may be a
decent investor but is surely not a good writer. I have been reading things
from Paul Graham for years and while the subjects sometimes are not bad, he is
a terrible writer. I can respect certain things about Graham, but his writing
and desire to abuse his position to spout nonsense is not one of them. Please
stick to investing hoards of cash and stop planting dangerous seeds in your
younger audience members in particular.

This is very harsh. How is he abusing his position? You are taking this
literally. If we are reading the same essay, Mr. Graham is not asking people
to slip to lower standards, relax their language skills, etc. But rather write
like they "sound". This sort of writing style will all come down to the kind
of audience being catered to.

------
vacri
I think better advice is to know your message, know your audience, and write
appropriately. If you're skilled enough to write flowery prose in the first
place, then you're skilled enough to detect the appropriate level and write to
it.

For example, there is a world of difference between troubleshooting a user
problem verbally, directly in email, or writing a guide for the problem on a
wiki. They all take different conversational styles.

------
gopowerranger
Most of the comments, here, are taking the statement too literally. What he
means is to write sentences in a way you would in normal conversation and not
try to be a writer of linguistic elocution. Don't use abbreviations, long
words we may not know, pretending to be Hemingway.

Too many pretend to be Hemingway when they should write like Brian Kernighan
at least.

~~~
copperx
> Don't use abbreviations, long words we may not know, pretending to be
> Hemingway.

You keep using that name, but I don't think you have read any of his works.

~~~
gopowerranger
I keep using that name? I think that's the first time I've done that in
decades.

------
davidf18
Read Strunk & White: Elements of Style

[http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-
Strunk/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-
Strunk/dp/020530902X/)

There are many examples about how to write clearly.

~~~
colindean
Every good writer has a copy of Strunk & White within arm's reach.

------
crimsonalucard
It really depends. Paul illustrates a clear difference between the way people
write and the way people talk. I would argue that while this is true, there
are cases where people write better than they talk.

------
iphone7166
Haha...is he suggesting Satya Nadella?

------
forrestthewoods
This is exactly how I write. It works great. Except in college where English
teachers mark down your paper for stupid reasons.

Many good, powerful speeches have repetition. Using the same word to end three
sentences in a row. This can make for a great speech. It does not make for a
good school grade. Oops.

