Page 139 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

130 DELIVERY

The simply written speech makes it possible for any speaker to
invest style and personality into the words and then into the
audience.
Most people don’t understand the difference between writing for
the ear and writing for the eye. Ideally, there is no difference. But
for the majority of people there will always be a big difference. A
surprising number of businesspeople write their own speeches. But
how they write those speeches makes it virtually impossible for them
to look or sound the way they naturally talk. In other words, they
defeat themselves even before they begin. Unwittingly, they create a
vehicle without wheels. That’s because the way we speak is often not
the way we write.
The solution is simple: Write the way you speak. To help you write
the way you speak, I have assembled a few easy writing rules:

1. Keep your sentences short. If you have a sentence with a number
of subordinate clauses, break it down into bite-sized pieces. Or break
it up with three dots ( . . . ) placed strategically throughout the long
sentence in several places. Or simply translate the long sentence into
a short one. For example:

Too-long sentence: It is necessary to reexamine our inten-
tions, and the attendant responsibilities that we understand lie
ahead, in order that we may have a more disciplined approach
to the challenges presented by the new tax legislation, which is
presently, in any event, expected to reveal a number of surprises
for our members, who can take some comfort in the fact that the

tax laws, as we have experienced them in the last five years, have
been generally favorable for people in an income bracket exceed-
ing $100,000.
Revised: The tax laws will change, and those changes will have
a material effect on each of us.

2. Choose the active voice. Wherever possible, avoid the passive
voice. The passive voice is the voice of the bureaucrat. (Of course, if