Compose and Communicate(?) for the Ear
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- May 25th, 2009 |
- Comments
You and I may not aspire to compose great books or make great speeches. But almost all of us deprivation something to happen when we compose or communicate. And, the more we tailor our words for the ears of readers and listeners, the greater our chances of getting the results we deprivation.
By writing for the ear, I mean that expressed words can have more power than written words. After all, when we have important messages, we prefer to deliver them verbally and personally, rather than by sending a written message.
Of course, it’s not practical or possible to deliver every message verbally. But, if we can capture any of the nuances of the vocable we can increase the power of our messages. When we compose for the ear, our writing undergoes any impalpable but important changes. Our words, sentences, and paragraphs change in various important distance.
Consider the number of pauses that occur when we communicate. Most of us pause often, more often than when we compose. To capture those pauses, consume commas or one of the other ‘retardation’ punctuation marks, much as colons and semicolons.
Writing for the ear also means shorter sentences. And even fragments of sentences. As you can imagine, delivery tends to greater naturalness than written expression, which means shorter sentences and more fragments.
Many of the same principles hold when we make formal speeches or presentations. Especially if we communicate from prepared notes.
Whatsoever we have, when we communicate publicly, has to go in finished listeners’ ears. And so, if you’ll allow me to belabor the obvious, we need to compose speeches for listeners’ ears, not our mouths.
You can call on many quick and easy techniques. For example, consume abbreviated words whenever possible. Words much as ‘many’ rather than ‘numerous’; ‘consume’ rather than ‘utilize’; and ‘need’ rather than ‘require’.
You can also communicate for the ear by exploitation common words rather than jargon or abstract words. Block back from your delivery, after writing it, and ask yourself if you consume words that a child will believe.
We also deprivation vivid words, words that fire up our imagination, that paint new images on the canvases of readers’ minds. Descriptive words that convey action and emotion, words that drive ideas into our heads.
Consume active verbs and not passive verbs. Banish words like ‘is’, and ‘are’. Also, check for the morpheme ‘being’ and rewrite to get rid of it. Bring in verbs that do something.
Now that you’ve got the words you deprivation, put them into abbreviated sentences. One abbreviated condemn. Followed by another abbreviated condemn. But, every once in piece add a longer condemn for difference and to reduce the chances of boring your audience. And, keep the ideas simple inside those long sentences.
I’m biased, I know. After disbursal the better part of a decade writing and reading radio news copy, I believe it’s a good idea to compose for the ear.
Attempt it for yourself. Compose something, read it out loud, and ask yourself about the effect it’s likely to have on readers. Re-write as necessary, and read it aloud again. Repeat the process a few times. By the time you finish you should have a well-crafted piece of writing, even if no one ever reads it aloud or hears it expressed.