Paul Graham. "Write as you say!"

_{Photo of Altamira Cave, Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain.}



The easiest way to increase the number of readers of your texts is to use a simple spoken language.



Most people who start writing write in a completely different language, different from the language they use to communicate, and the structure of the sentences used is different, as is the set of words. For example, in colloquial English, no one uses the verb “pen” ( write in pen , used as a synonym for the verb “write”). Someone might feel like an idiot, having heard such words in a conversation.

')

The last straw for me was a statement I read a couple of days ago: The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: “After Altamira, all is decadence!” (The mutable Spaniard proclaimed: “After Altamira , everything is decadent!” “Mercurial” as a metaphor for defining something non-permanent, unstable, changeable, as one of the translations of this word is the word “mercury” ).



This phrase is from Neil Oliver 's The History of Ancient Britain . I feel a little uneasy, because I used an example from this book, because it is written no worse than many others. But just imagine that you call Picasso a "mercurial Spaniard" when talking with a friend. The mere mention of such a turn of speech will make anyone want to raise their eyebrows in surprise. And yet people write whole books like that.



So, written and oral language is different. Is written language worse?



If you want people to read and understand what you are writing about, the answer to the question above will be “yes” . Written language is more complicated, which makes it more difficult to learn and requires some effort to read. It is also more formal and dry, which sometimes leads to a drift in the attention of the reader. But perhaps worst of all, complex sentences and intricate words give the writer a false impression that they speak more than they really are.



In fact, to express complex ideas do not need complex sentences. When specialists in some difficult-to-understand topic discuss with each other some individual ideas from this area, they use speech turns no more difficult than when discussing the lunch menu. Of course they use specific words, but even those are no more than necessary. And in my experience, the harder the subject, the less formally it is discussed by experts. In part, I think this is due to the fact that they are not trying to prove something, and in part because complex ideas imply less linguistic flexibility.



The unofficial language is a kind of "sportswear" for ideas.



I do not claim that the spoken language always works better. Poetry, like most musical texts, can express such things that are not amenable to conversational style. Some writers can successfully use intricate prose words. There are cases when writers do not want to simplify the concept of their texts, but almost always spoken language is better.



It may seem difficult for most to write in spoken language. In this case, perhaps the best solution would be to sketch the first draft in normal mode and style. Then you need to look at each sentence and ask yourself the question: “Could I say so if I spoke with a friend?” If not, imagine what you would say and use this expression instead of the original one. After some time, this filter will start to operate automatically. When you write something unspeakable, you will hear an imaginary grinding sound of indigestible words lying on the page.



Before publishing a new essay, I read it out loud and correct everything that does not look like speech. Minor phonetic roughness is also corrected. I do not know whether this is necessary, but such edits do not take much time and effort.



Of course, this trick does not always help. It happens so far from the spoken language of the text that some statements can not be replaced by others. For such cases there are more radical solutions. After writing a draft, try to explain to a friend what is written. Then replace the draft with what you just said.



People often tell me that my essays sound like ordinary speech, and the fact that such a fact honors a separate comment shows how rarely someone can write in conversational style.



If you just try to write in conversational style, you will already be a head taller than 95% of those writing. And it’s so easy to do - just don’t allow statements to be more cumbersome than when talking to friends.