💡 Here’s a tip to make your writing more readable: write as you speak.
I used to be obsessed with using all sorts of professional jargon in my articles, even throwing in some “buzzwords” picked up from the internet industry, thinking it made me sound more professional. But every time I finished an article and showed it to people around me, they were always confused and needed me to explain it before they could understand.
Looking back now, that was a very unwise approach. Over-pursuing “professionalism” made my articles too difficult to read, preventing my ideas from being effectively communicated through text. Even when I revisited them later, understanding took more effort. It was neither beneficial for myself nor for others.
Inspired by Paul Graham’s articles, I tried to revise some of my phrasing to be more everyday. Sure enough, my writing efficiency increased significantly, and combined with voice input, the psychological pressure when drafting was greatly reduced. After making this adjustment, I became more motivated to write articles and more willing to record daily thoughts anytime using voice input. Many inspirations were captured in these everyday fragments.
Among these daily thoughts, I recorded many interesting questions, which became sources of inspiration for subsequent writing. Based on these questions, I gathered materials and added information, ultimately making the content of my articles more substantial.
Are there downsides to conversational writing? Of course. Conversational expression is often more fragmented, and the phrasing and logical rigor may be insufficient, so later polishing and editing become very necessary. But don’t overcorrect. Try to replace sentences with how you would normally talk to a friend; this will make the article feel like a chat with the reader.
When discussing complex issues, it’s even more important to use simple narration. If you can’t express the core of a problem in one sentence, you might not have fully understood it in the first place.
Conversational expression might be an effective exercise: expressing deep thoughts through everyday communication. This is a personal style of expression that belongs to us.
At the same time, I thought of an interesting example: the “Simplified Chinese Character Movement.” From today’s perspective, this movement greatly increased literacy rates and reduced communication costs for people across different regions.
Due to the influence of Hong Kong culture, traditional Chinese characters were also widely used in Guangdong, where I grew up. Most of the books my grandfather collected were in traditional characters. When I first started learning to read, the complex stroke structures of traditional characters made me feel the learning difficulty was very high. Later, in elementary school, Mandarin gradually became more widespread, and simplified characters entered our textbooks around that time.
Guangdong is a multilingual region. In the city where I grew up, people spoke various dialects from different language families. It was with the popularization of Mandarin that communication became more convenient for everyone. The role of Mandarin in China is similar to that of English in the world.
Finally, let’s also carry out a “simplification movement” in our writing!
Further Reading:
- Write Like You Talk: https://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html
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💡 Thank you for reading! Feel free to share this article or write to me to exchange thoughts.