{"id":542,"date":"2012-05-18T09:33:02","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T21:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=542"},"modified":"2012-05-21T08:10:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-20T20:10:44","slug":"conversing-with-your-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"Conversing with your reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Recently, a dear friend (who is also an art tutor) was struggling to put together a manual.<\/p>\n

This woman knows her stuff.\u00a0 And she\u2019s an eloquent speaker.\u00a0 But when she tried to produce a written version of some of the ideas and techniques that she is so good at conveying to her students, the result was, by her own admission, \u2018pretentious treacle\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not what I intended,\u2019 she said.\u00a0 \u2018I was really hoping for a conversational tone.\u00a0 Are there any tricks I should know?\u2019<\/p>\n

Well, yes, there are.\u00a0 Although I\u2019m not sure that they\u2019re really tricks.<\/p>\n

If you want to produce conversational prose, the first thing that you need to do is converse<\/em>.\u00a0 You need to have one person in mind.\u00a0 And you need to talk<\/em> to that one person \u2013 as though you were talking to them over a cup of coffee.\u00a0 If you try to write<\/em> for a crowd of strangers, you soon run the risk of talking to no one.<\/p>\n

The second thing you need to do is to keep your language simple.\u00a0 Wherever possible, try to use short, everyday words.\u00a0 And, where it\u2019s necessary to use technical or jargon words, make sure that their meaning is clear to the person to whom you\u2019re talking.<\/p>\n

The third thing is to use short sentences.\u00a0 Avoid putting several ideas into the same sentence.\u00a0 If you have several ideas \u2013 even closely-related ideas \u2013 give each one its own sentence.<\/p>\n

The fourth thing is to use short paragraphs.\u00a0 Research suggests that people try to chunk information into bite-sized blocks as they read.\u00a0 Do them a favour; save them the time and the effort; do it for them.\u00a0 The easier you can make it for your reader to read, the longer he or she will keep reading.<\/p>\n

And, as you finish each bit of your conversation, read it out.\u00a0 Aloud.\u00a0 Does it sound right?\u00a0 If it sounds right, then there\u2019s a very good chance that it will read right.<\/p>\n

Oh \u2026 and would you like another cup of coffee?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, a dear friend (who is also an art tutor) was struggling to put together a manual. This woman knows her stuff.\u00a0 And she\u2019s an eloquent speaker.\u00a0 But when she tried to produce a written version of some of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}