I don’t know about you, but in English classes I was always told to write like I speak, or “find my voice”. And yet when I was taught how to write formal documents e.g. essays I was taught to write in a certain structure, e.g introduction, paragraph, paragraph, conclusion. Unless I’m feeling exceptionally lucid, that just isn’t how I speak.

Jerry Weissman throws some light on this disconnect in quite an interesting (but awfully titled) article here on the use of left and right brain when presenting. [Thanks Jen for this]

Some quotes:

“Building a presentation is a creative process. That means starting with the right brain.

Here’s the problem: Most presenters, when developing their stories, tend to apply a left-brain approach to what is really a right-brain process. They try to jump immediately to a logical, structured, linear end product, when their right brain is still caroming around in nonlinear mode.”

“The solution is timing. It’s not a matter of more time; it’s about the proper use of time. Get the sequence right: Let the right brain complete its stream-of-consciousness cycle before applying the left brain’s structure. Focus before Flow.”

And lastly:

My essential point is a more general one. An excerpt of spoken language, when transcribed and printed, will never read like well-crafted prose. As a personal example, I recently recorded myself during a program with my clients, delivering the same material I’ve delivered for nearly a decade and a half. When I read the transcription, I was most surprised to see how irregular my word patterns were. The reason: Spoken language is governed by the right brain. Rather than focusing on the rules of logic, grammar, syntax, and consistency, it flows freely, wherever the concepts lead.

By contrast, the production of written language tends to be governed by the left brain. When most people sit down to write a letter, memo, or report, their minds are front-loaded with left-brain functions: logic, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Rather than bouncing freely from one idea to the next, dragging in names, references, pronouns, and concepts that may or may not be clear, they move methodically through a sequence of points, meticulously self-correcting their syntax and logic as they go.

For me, one of the great things about blogging is the free flow of ideas. But that said, a well-written, well-structured post is far more likely to get my attention than a completely loose one.

So perhaps one of the engines of blogging’s sauces as an idea-sharing/learning medium is that most posts are written in a conversational manner?