I Didn’t Learned The ABC’s (of writing) Until I Was 21 Years Old

I thought I had the ABCs down after elementary school and all the writing I’ve had to do in my education thus far. Nothing could have prepared me for learning a new form of the ABCs in writing, accuracy, brevity, and clarity. These words make sense when applied to quality writing for the ear.

I’ve never given too much thought to writing for the eye vs writing for the ear. From one reading this week, written content that is meant to be spoken for the ear is looking to hear the final version rather than read it. This means using shorter sentences with simple structure and basic vocabulary.  This makes sense because someone who is reading a piece of writing can go back and soak in the words in their own time. Writing for the ear in the form of speeches and commercials needs to be more digestible for the ears to follow and process words faster. Therefore, those basic writing techniques add to the brevity and clarity of the spoken words.

Moving onto the A portion of the ABCs for writing for the ear, using present tense over past tense, verbalizing statistics, and going for the big picture overall. Being accurate in these ways makes writing a lot more easy to follow and listen to as the audience. In writing on paper and writing for spoken content, I always tend to overlook present-tense language which can easily turn listeners off to my writing. Present tense language is more engaging and will have more impact on listeners. This goes hand in hand with verbalizing statistics and if numbers are involved, rounding them up. This is a smart way to get a point across without making listeners think too hard and try to visualize the statistics in their heads.

Lastly, always writing for the big picture when writing for the ears is the biggest takeaway for me. When listeners only remember 10% of what they hear, using the ABC method is extremely powerful in making an impact on the written content. It not only makes the content easier on the ears but the stories told through writing for the ear have so much potential to be influential on listeners’ ears.