A few decades back when I was a PhD student a British university I taught an undergraduate class and I noticed that the quality of writing in their examination papers and projects was clunky and awkward, in contrast to the admirable, free-flowing, everyday style the way they wrote (as they spoke) on their student bulletin boards. I used to wonder why they didn't write like this in their classwork.
Years later, when writing my thesis I'd routinely find myself at a loss of how to communicate a concept. The solution was always to write down my answer to the question "what are you trying to say".
My current best way to write is to just write everything that amuses me, then go back and edit out the tangents, and then usually reverse the order of the paragraphs.
I always understood it as advice for school children who don't know how to express themselves in writing and end up with a blank page. You are encouraged to imagine you're talking to someone to overcome the hurdle of translating thoughts into words.
This is largely where I'm ending up, but I started at the other end.
There is value in prose that carries your literal voice when the audience is _people who know you_. There is negative value in writing prose that requires the audience to _read it in your voice_ in order for it to make sense, avoid offense, or convey intent.
My prose changed first: it became plain spoken, as devoid of contextual subtlety as I could make it. My career benefitted. My spoken interactions followed.
The only thing that bothers me about it is the nagging sense that I've become so fucking boring.
I also started at the other end, in the sense that from an early age and for the rest of my life I have spent a lot more time chatting over text than with spoken word.
It’s a very good post — and I do agree with the main ideas. It’s pretty remarkable how good writers like Scott Alexander and others are able to consistently pump out good writing, especially when the key does seem to always comes down to clarity (and mostly revision for me). Maybe reps are able to give that over time, but even with getting older and now being able to bounce ideas off LLMs == it still takes me so many iterations before I feel like my prose / ideas / outlines are worth sharing.
One superpower I wish I had is the incredible summarizing into single sentences that you can see in the LLM web UIs when they automatically make a title for a discussion.
I would like to see them include some analysis of the first recorded audio conversations such as on wax cylinders or the 1930s WPA/Federal Writers’ Project. Was sentence complexity the same as it is now?
The focus on clarity of thought is a modern shift, or at least the "modern preference". Hemingway was a big proponent on short, direct sentences and few or no adjectives.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, complex sentence structure signaled intelligence for both the author and reader. It was a form of entertainment, in a way, when books were few and nights were long. Try reading Henry James for an idea about what this looked like in practice. Shakespeare is another obvious example of "heightened language" besides archaic words the play are written in iambic pentameter and the spoken text is far from natural (yet incredibly precise).
I cannot agree with this after reading transcripts of Trump's speeches. It does make sense in some scenarios, but writing like one speaks only works for people who speak clearly and effectively; unfortunately most people are terrible communicators.
Maybe more an effective rhetorician than communicator. I suppose his communication does match the clarity of thought though... it's just that the thoughts are so jumbled he says 3 things that contradict each other in the same breath.
Being a mediocre writer, I don't know what it means to write like you talk, but I know I've noticed a strong correlation between how ornate one's language is and how little one knows what they're talking about. The people who know the most use the simplest words, and if someone uses complicated language, they're either trying to deceive or to hide the weaknesses of their argument.
This only goes for specific cases, of course. E.g. it probably applies more to business language than to novels.
This is easy to say if you can write, but, what if you are trying to write in a second language?
As an English person, I can write reasonably well without having to know what any of the technical terms for writing mean. I don't need to know any formal rules for writing in different tenses, and even Oxford commas just happen automagically. I can break the rules too, not that I even know what the rules are.
Over the years I have worked with a lot of people from other parts of the world that have English as their second language. They can't write in English purely on instinct, 'writing as one might talk', they are stuck trying to remember the rules and the billions of exceptions to the rules that English has, just to make it hard for the second-language crew. Of course, in Britain, we can slip into Cockney Rhyming Slang, Glaswegian or West Country Speak (tm), for not even the Irish or the Americans to understand us.
Hence, I wonder about the author. Is English his first language? We are in 'true Scotsman' territory here, and a native English speaker is just going to write, they are not going to write verbose articles such as this one.
Put it this way, a true English speaker has absolutely no idea what a 'past participle' is. They have absolutely no need to know. Whereas the German, speaking his most humourous English, gained from many years of study and watching TV, absolutely knows what a 'past participle' is, but they haven't the foggiest if someone English says 'take a butchers'.
Um, er, um, the, um, real problem with writing as one talks is, er, you know, sometimes, we, er, put in lots of ums and ers. That is the real danger of 'writing as one talks', but, when editing the ums out, we dabble and wreck that flow of words that sounded great but didn't look too great on the page.
Shew, if I wrote like I talked to other people it would be an entertaining disaster. When you speak, you're speaking to your specific audience, which could be your boss, your toddler, your spouse, your friend of 25 years, your in-laws, your candor in giving a presentation, this list goes on.
I write how I think, and how I think is profoundly shaped by reading, listening, and absorbing.
Write how you talk seems almost arrogant. Writing is an expression of an idea, and how I speak vs. how I write are so vastly different it really does amuse me to chew on this.
I suppose TFA is mostly focused on academic writing [0] (article quote) but the vast, vast majority of people in this world today are not writing academically, they're posting here, or sending a text, or work emails. Good writing means you don't need to assume everyone is an expert or a non-expert. The first thought that comes to my mind here is "mansplaining".
[0] So the common advice to "write like you talk" can be underspecified. It's good to avoid pretentious and formulaic cliches that mask the absence of precise thought, and separately to avoid dense and impenetrable jargon that's hard for non-experts to understand.
I challenge you to watch the first 15 minutes of Anant Agarwal teaching Circuits and Electronics at MIT: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-s...
Then download the transcript and consider whether it is really the best casting for the written equivalent of the same material.
Anant Agarwal is very smart, a great effective teacher, but his speaking style is highly tuned for teaching verbally, not for imparting the same material through written text.
A few decades back when I was a PhD student a British university I taught an undergraduate class and I noticed that the quality of writing in their examination papers and projects was clunky and awkward, in contrast to the admirable, free-flowing, everyday style the way they wrote (as they spoke) on their student bulletin boards. I used to wonder why they didn't write like this in their classwork.
Years later, when writing my thesis I'd routinely find myself at a loss of how to communicate a concept. The solution was always to write down my answer to the question "what are you trying to say".
What I've always interpreted this advice as as is to read out loud what I write and then eliminate the parts that sound weird or like a robot.
Source: Writing for more than half my life and HN has liked some of my articles in the past
My current best way to write is to just write everything that amuses me, then go back and edit out the tangents, and then usually reverse the order of the paragraphs.
I always understood it as advice for school children who don't know how to express themselves in writing and end up with a blank page. You are encouraged to imagine you're talking to someone to overcome the hurdle of translating thoughts into words.
This is how I write
I literally use my iphone voice to text to transcribe, then go back and edit.
It’s surprising that more people aren’t doing it
I learned the opposite lesson and ended up talking like I write.
This is largely where I'm ending up, but I started at the other end.
There is value in prose that carries your literal voice when the audience is _people who know you_. There is negative value in writing prose that requires the audience to _read it in your voice_ in order for it to make sense, avoid offense, or convey intent.
My prose changed first: it became plain spoken, as devoid of contextual subtlety as I could make it. My career benefitted. My spoken interactions followed.
The only thing that bothers me about it is the nagging sense that I've become so fucking boring.
I also started at the other end, in the sense that from an early age and for the rest of my life I have spent a lot more time chatting over text than with spoken word.
Perhaps there is beauty in 'negative value'. Art may have 'negative value' by that definition.
That's how you get flagged as an AI!
Arguing you should not write "complex" things or "formal" things becuase of poor attention spans just makes me sad about the state of literacy.
It’s a very good post — and I do agree with the main ideas. It’s pretty remarkable how good writers like Scott Alexander and others are able to consistently pump out good writing, especially when the key does seem to always comes down to clarity (and mostly revision for me). Maybe reps are able to give that over time, but even with getting older and now being able to bounce ideas off LLMs == it still takes me so many iterations before I feel like my prose / ideas / outlines are worth sharing.
One superpower I wish I had is the incredible summarizing into single sentences that you can see in the LLM web UIs when they automatically make a title for a discussion.
I wonder if there’s a way to train that ability.
> I wonder if there’s a way to train that ability.
I have to imagine it comes down to study and practice, just like everything else.
to start with, I would say "write as you talk".
but the idea is dubious: writing/reading is a different transaction than speaking/listening.
I would like to see them include some analysis of the first recorded audio conversations such as on wax cylinders or the 1930s WPA/Federal Writers’ Project. Was sentence complexity the same as it is now?
The focus on clarity of thought is a modern shift, or at least the "modern preference". Hemingway was a big proponent on short, direct sentences and few or no adjectives.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, complex sentence structure signaled intelligence for both the author and reader. It was a form of entertainment, in a way, when books were few and nights were long. Try reading Henry James for an idea about what this looked like in practice. Shakespeare is another obvious example of "heightened language" besides archaic words the play are written in iambic pentameter and the spoken text is far from natural (yet incredibly precise).
I cannot agree with this after reading transcripts of Trump's speeches. It does make sense in some scenarios, but writing like one speaks only works for people who speak clearly and effectively; unfortunately most people are terrible communicators.
What do you mean? He has a rabid fan base who loves him because he writes like he talks!
It clearly works for him - I hate how he talks, but he seems to be an effective communicator if you only judge by results. Sadly.
"write like you talk" is advice for type-1 thinkers.
presumably also advice from them.
Maybe more an effective rhetorician than communicator. I suppose his communication does match the clarity of thought though... it's just that the thoughts are so jumbled he says 3 things that contradict each other in the same breath.
> more an effective rhetorician than communicator.
What’s the difference?
Being a mediocre writer, I don't know what it means to write like you talk, but I know I've noticed a strong correlation between how ornate one's language is and how little one knows what they're talking about. The people who know the most use the simplest words, and if someone uses complicated language, they're either trying to deceive or to hide the weaknesses of their argument.
This only goes for specific cases, of course. E.g. it probably applies more to business language than to novels.
(2025) Seems to be a link-post
Just write!
This is easy to say if you can write, but, what if you are trying to write in a second language?
As an English person, I can write reasonably well without having to know what any of the technical terms for writing mean. I don't need to know any formal rules for writing in different tenses, and even Oxford commas just happen automagically. I can break the rules too, not that I even know what the rules are.
Over the years I have worked with a lot of people from other parts of the world that have English as their second language. They can't write in English purely on instinct, 'writing as one might talk', they are stuck trying to remember the rules and the billions of exceptions to the rules that English has, just to make it hard for the second-language crew. Of course, in Britain, we can slip into Cockney Rhyming Slang, Glaswegian or West Country Speak (tm), for not even the Irish or the Americans to understand us.
Hence, I wonder about the author. Is English his first language? We are in 'true Scotsman' territory here, and a native English speaker is just going to write, they are not going to write verbose articles such as this one.
Put it this way, a true English speaker has absolutely no idea what a 'past participle' is. They have absolutely no need to know. Whereas the German, speaking his most humourous English, gained from many years of study and watching TV, absolutely knows what a 'past participle' is, but they haven't the foggiest if someone English says 'take a butchers'.
Um, er, um, the, um, real problem with writing as one talks is, er, you know, sometimes, we, er, put in lots of ums and ers. That is the real danger of 'writing as one talks', but, when editing the ums out, we dabble and wreck that flow of words that sounded great but didn't look too great on the page.
Shew, if I wrote like I talked to other people it would be an entertaining disaster. When you speak, you're speaking to your specific audience, which could be your boss, your toddler, your spouse, your friend of 25 years, your in-laws, your candor in giving a presentation, this list goes on.
I write how I think, and how I think is profoundly shaped by reading, listening, and absorbing.
Write how you talk seems almost arrogant. Writing is an expression of an idea, and how I speak vs. how I write are so vastly different it really does amuse me to chew on this.
I suppose TFA is mostly focused on academic writing [0] (article quote) but the vast, vast majority of people in this world today are not writing academically, they're posting here, or sending a text, or work emails. Good writing means you don't need to assume everyone is an expert or a non-expert. The first thought that comes to my mind here is "mansplaining".
[0] So the common advice to "write like you talk" can be underspecified. It's good to avoid pretentious and formulaic cliches that mask the absence of precise thought, and separately to avoid dense and impenetrable jargon that's hard for non-experts to understand.
I challenge you to watch the first 15 minutes of Anant Agarwal teaching Circuits and Electronics at MIT: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-s... Then download the transcript and consider whether it is really the best casting for the written equivalent of the same material. Anant Agarwal is very smart, a great effective teacher, but his speaking style is highly tuned for teaching verbally, not for imparting the same material through written text.