Conversational Writing

byJohn2handy

320 followers

4 years ago

My writing style

My writing style tends to be more conversational. I have to be very deliberate sometimes to go back and carefully proofread to make sure I didn't leave out a crucial word, or punctuation that can change the meaning.

Woman without her man, is a curse.
Woman, without her, man is a curse.

In conversation, we don't notice the incomplete sentences, sentence fragments, dangling particles, and implied meaning and a lot of other grammatical incongruence. But when writing it is important to make the meaning clear to the "dear reader" who might not be on the same frequency.

I read very fast, and cover a lot of territory quickly. We have to assume that most content surfers and searchers are doing the same thing.

Grammar Police

People, and search engines, and anal grammar police types, would go into fits and spasms if I just left my writing the way it comes out of my head. Ironically, when I am satisfied with my proofreading and editing and run the check, I do not usually get very many complaints on grammar. They are mostly for starting to many sentences with the same word, "I". So I have been trying more deliberately to not do that so much.

Men, traditionally, do not have a good reputation for being good communicators, Go figure?

How many honest, intelligent, caring men in the world does it take to do the dishes?
Both of them.

An internet flame once told me I was the only guy she knew who could write a complete sentence. It was a compliment to my intelligence, I think. Or maybe a confession of how few men she actually knew? But what she didn't know was how hard I had to work at it.

Someone even told me I was motor mouth. Now that hurt. But the other side of that coin is that I also have people tell me sometimes they are telling me things they haven't told anyone else ever. They wouldn't say that if they did not think I was listening and empathizing. In spite of the fact that my girlfriend tells my all the time, "You never listen to me" ( even after a 1:45:20) phone conversation where she did most of the talking.)

Hearing vs, Listening

I learned only recently (you gotta love YouTube) that unless you actually repeat back verbatim some of what you heard, especially to women, they will not know that you actually heard them.
Don't take it personal Ladies, I didn't make that up. So I tried it and, wow, It actually works.

The blogosphere and the internet is all about people being able to find what they want to see (hear) in the content, and in the context of their own need or frame of reference. That is also what we want from comment feedback. We want to know if someone got it. We want to know if they could use it; if it was helpful in what they were searching.

Conversationally we tend to keep repeating ourselves until we know the other person heard us. My Dad used to say about certain individuals, The only way they could ever hear anything is if they had ears on their tonsils" So please don't talk while I am interrupting.

Repitition

Repition in blogs, pages, and posts, is not necessarily a bad thing. Coming up with as many different ways as possible to say the same thing is what creative writing is all about. Different things will resonate with different people.

My composition teachers always said to write a good composition it will have introduction, body and conclusion. Say what you are going to say, say it, and say what you said.

Imperfection

I never make mistakes, once I thought I did, but I was mistaken. I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but what you don'r realize is that what I said is not what I meant. Not knowing, and having a strict regard for the truth, I will refrain from making an assertion for fear of propagating an error.

But about my imperfection. I tend to get lost in my own thinking, thinking about what I should have said, or what I want to say, rather than listening to what is being said. Repeating back verbatim at least some of what you hear even a few words will force you to listen, to chose words and evaluate their relevance. Whether the other person realizes it or not, it still works.

I really hate being startled out of my revelry with, "Did you hear me?"
"Oh yes, Now what did you say?"

There is, and should be, a lot of difference between how we speak and how we write content.