Loud Mouth

Almost no exercise will improve your writing more than reading what you write out loud – not just things meant to be spoken such as speeches and scripts, but press releases, letters to the editor, new business proposals, Web site copy, pitch letters, etc. If it can’t pass the read-out-loud test, it fails.   By reading out loud you’ll recognize when your writing sounds stiff when it should sound loose, where it’s uptight when it should be relaxed, where it’s formal when it should be creative black tie. Just because you’re writing as part of your job doesn’t mean that it has to include the jargon, lingo, and clichés that float around in your industry. Being “conversational” and “serious” aren’t mutually exclusive.   You’ll find that if you read what you write out loud you’ll notice typos more – when you’ve written it’s instead of its and you’re instead of your. You'll naturally pause where a comma should be even when there's no comma there; conversely, you'll keep going when a comma appears if that comma isn't necessary. I'm no scientist, but I think our brains are wired to do that. You’ll also stumble over awkward phrases, ridiculous words (utilize, proactive, plethora) and, often, grammatical mistakes.  Where you stumble, so will your readers. “Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words,” wrote Verlyn Klinkenborg in The New York Times last Saturday. “To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone.”     In fact, there’s a brain-power-boosting theory that reading out loud does double duty because it forces you to process the information twice: first because you have to understand the words for them to make sense and, second, because you have to pronounce the words, forcing you to think about how to do it correctly. By enunciating each word you’ll experience for yourself whether your word choice is working to your document’s advantage and not just acting as proof points of your impressive vocabulary and fine liberal arts education.     Think about contractions, too. Intuitively we use them when we talk, but when we put words to paper all of a sudden we start writing “they will” or “we are” – out loud, in the middle of a sentence, these phrases often sound robotic. As contractions they sound more natural, more like how we speak every day.   By reading out loud you’ll also hear when sentences are meaningless and empty. How many times, after all, have you read a sentence like “We will utilize proprietary methodologies and best practices in order to leverage messaging that breaks through the clutter” and not even noticed it? Eyes gloss over (not to mention glaze over at) sentences like that. Read it out loud and you’ll notice it, all right, and cringe that you were its author.