Finding your voice
Conversations in writing
For relationship writing to resemble a conversation, we need to bring
in some of the features of 'talking' to our readers. But what
does this involve?
Email messages are sometimes described as 'half writing,
half talking'. Written to people we know well, they have an
exceptionally informal but abbreviated conversational style.
Professor David Crystal, in his book Language and the
Internet, introduces the notion of 'netspeak'. He describes
this as a third medium which is different to normal speech
and writing 'but selectively and adaptively displays properties
of both'.
David Crystal emphasises that 'netspeak is better seen as
written language which has been pulled some way in the direction
of speech than as a spoken language which has been written
down'.
Anyone who has seen transcripts of spontaneous spoken conversations,
as opposed to scripted ones, will know immediately what he
means. Spoken English is often so littered with false starts,
repetition, fillers ('Um', 'I mean', 'You see', 'Well') that the linguistic term 'utterance' is
more appropriate than sentence.
To create a web conversation in writing, it usually works
best if you first draft it in a normal written style but then
edit it into a more natural spoken form. As with all web copy,
you should then tighten it up by deleting any unnecessary
words.
The structure of the conversation will be influenced by levels
of formality and informality that are acceptable to your organisation,
as well as personality values. Traditional banks, for example,
are naturally quite formal and conservative, while newer dot.com
types are more casual.
Readers, however, can be just as uncomfortable with a very
informal style of writing as they are with corporate speak.
As we get to know people better and have a more established
relationship with them, we naturally become more relaxed and
informal. This needs to be considered in any follow-up communication,
as well as on intranets.
Next: How informal do we go?
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