Classic Advice, “Write Like You Talk,” No Longer Applies

Back when I did business writing workshops at the University of Richmond, I would tell attendees not to worry about remembering all the English rules they learned in school and to just write like they talked. We were educated people, and most of us naturally spoke with passable grammar.

I believe we still do, but conversational speech has become SO loaded with meaningless garbage and nonsensical idioms that I’ve thrown “Write like you talk” on the ash heap of worthless writing advice.

This enlightenment came to me because for the past six years, I’ve been doing transcription as a side gig.

(I recommend transcription if you’re a fast, accurate typist. The content can be varied and fascinating, and if you’re good, the pay’s decent if you hook up with a reputable service.)

Most of the speech I transcribe is so atrocious, if it were ever published, readers would be gouging their eyes out with forks.

I confess I mindlessly pepper my own speech with like and you know too often, and I try to catch myself. But those words aren’t the bulk of my verbal content, like this:

Like, I was trying to like watch this really good movie, you know? And like my dog Barney, you know, he like wouldn’t stop like barking. But like, you know, nothing was like there. It was like so annoying.

Nowhere near as annoying as having to listen to this. And I’m not exaggerating. People do talk like this. You probably know them.

Returning to transcription, there are essentially two ways to do it. To transcribe “Verbatim” means you type EVERY uh, um, like, etc., which can leave you wanting to rip your ears off and put a fist through the wall.

The other protocol is “Standard,” which means you “take out the trash” and transcribe only actual content. It’s possible to raise speakers’ written IQs as much as 50 points simply by omitting their brainless verbal padding.

As a small taste, please have the good sense never to write uh or um unless you’re composing fiction and it’s dialogue for a character who’s an abject moron.

I’ve got a list of pet peeves, and I’m going to discuss them in upcoming posts as a cautionary series on what never to let creep into your writing.Next, I’ll address how the word like oozed into our speech to replace said and why it makes no sense whatsoever.

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The More You Avoid “There,” the Better

Here are two compelling reasons to recheck whenever you write the word there.

First, if you begin a sentence with there and any tense of to be, such as:

• There is
• There was
• There were
• There will be

It’s probably padding that adds little to nothing and makes the sentence sound passive. You can usually fix this by putting the words that do say something first. Here’s an example:

There is a need to raise taxes to pay for road repairs.

You could go in at least two directions with this, depending on what you’re trying to emphasize — taxes or road repairs. Remember, readers get grabbed by what they see first.

If it’s taxes:

Raising taxes will pay for road repairs.

If it’s infrastructure:

To pay for road repairs, we need to raise taxes.

Here’s a minimalist option:

Paying for road repairs means raising taxes.

Are you getting the hang of it? Let’s try another one:

There were a dozen terrorists hiding in a cave with a bomb.

The simplest fix:

A dozen terrorists were hiding in a cave with a bomb.

You saw nary a there in any of these rewrites, and you didn’t miss it a bit, did you?

& & &

Rampant misuse of the contraction there’s (short for there is) is a new a pet peeve of mine. People use it with EVERYTHING, even plurals.

What results is not only a weak sentence, but an ignorant one:

There’s multiple ways to write any sentence.

(Microsoft Word just threw down the blue-double-underscore flag on that example. When Word notices your grammar is foul, you’ve hit rock-bottom.)

If you didn’t use the contraction, would you say, “There is multiple ways to write any sentence?” I certainly hope not.

If the plural ways don’t tip you off, then multiple should get your attention.

The plural subject takes the plural there are. And if you ever dare try to contract that to there’re, I’ll be forced to hunt you down and it won’t be pretty.

Now going back to my first point, to fix this, you could write:

You can write any sentence in multiple ways.

Advice: After you write something, do a Find on There and see how many of them you can eliminate.

Since When is “Into” ALWAYS One Word?

After seeing into all my life and thinking nothing of it, over just the past few months, it has caused me an existential crisis.

My only personal run-in was with some high school short story I wrote where a character walked “into the door” somewhere. My English teacher said it meant the character had actual impact with the door.

Yikes! Lesson learned.

(On the other hand, if I’d written that he walked “through the door,” this teacher, who seemed to take everything literally, would have claimed the character reduced the door to splinters.)

Now it seems everybody uses into as one word EVERY TIME.

I consulted Grammar Girl™ Mignon Fogarty’s Quick and Dirty Tips™, and found some comfort and clarification. She explained that into is a preposition generally relating to direction. (He walked into the room.)

I’ll add that it also relates to transformation. (She turned into a witch for Halloween.)

And I’ll add that it may be one word if you mean “to go inside” or “within.” (He jumped into his jeep.)

One more addition: It’s one word if you mean “intense interest.” (He’s really into playing with model trains.)

I’ve seen the following example written as one word, but I would say it should be two, like this:

I’m going to move in to a new house.

That’s because we call it “move-in day,” not “move-into day.” And because the sentence is intended to convey the act of moving rather than that the writer is going inside a new house.

Here’s an example as written that made my eyelid twitch because I think it’s wrong:

I can’t come into work on weekends.

The author meant that he couldn’t go there to do any work, not that he was physically unable get inside the office.

In my book, these next examples are also two words, even though you could make a weak argument that some direction is implied.

The maid came in to tidy up.

I think I’ll turn in to bed for the night.

The suspect turned himself in to police.

Bottom line: In my own writing, I find myself trying to avoid using into altogether. It’s not easy. There has to be a better way.

Does Reese’s Want to be the Official Candy of the Vatican?

This is what you get when copywriters who don’t have a firm grip on spelling and phonetics write your ads:

When I first saw this Reese’s® Minis print ad several months ago, I did a double-take at “popable,” which pinged in my mind’s ear as “pope-able.”

Using this spelling, the past tense would be “poped.” Have you ever seen popcorn poped? Or a balloon poped?

Soon after, I came across another ad with similar wording, for Starburst® candy.

I don’t think the double “p” detracted from the message. Do you?

Then the other night, Reese’s took it to the next level with a TV commercial:

[2015 Update: There was a YouTube video here, but it no longer exists. The ad also used “popable.” I’m thinking Reese’s repented over their misspelling ways.]

Now I wonder if they’re hoping Pope Francis will notice and perhaps cut an endorsement deal.

Words get made up in advertising all the time. But they work only when they’re clever and not spelled so that literate potential customers will be inclined to mispronounce them and miss the point.

Maybe Reese’s thinks dropping letters appeals to the texting set, who don’t put a high premium on spelling. They’ve obviously spent a fortune spreading this error far and wide. And people wonder why Johnny can’t spell.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think Reese’s would have done better to stick with their previous description for Minis, which was “perfectly tiny.”

Now they just look perfectly ignorant.