I want you to think about a company
whose services you pay for your
utilities company and insurance company
your phone company something like that
it’s got one and I want you to remember
a time when they frustrated you they got
something wrong they didn’t follow
through they provide a bad service they
drop the ball and as customers we hate
that right and those companies have a
small window to make things right with
us so let’s imagine that they send you
an apology email they have a couple of
options of how to go about this first
option fairly relaxed quite person or
something like this hey Shelly we’re
sorry we got the date wrong for setting
up the internet at your new home
not like this happened recently or
anything we know that was really
inconvenient thanks for letting us know
about the mistakes so we can fix it
we’ll do our best to make sure it
doesn’t happen again
Thanks your favorite internet provider
or they have a second option something
in a more formal business II kind of
voice because they want to sound more
professional dear valued customer it is
with regret that we write to express our
apologies for the recent error not our
recent error it was an unavoidable
disruption within our system due to a
service upgrade we apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused you
feel at all warm and fuzzy because it’s
the classic non apology and it’s what
the formal business voice lends itself
to they may as well have signed off with
sorry not sorry because that’s pretty
much how it feels we can all see it we
can feel it we can hear it it’s
practically impossible to sound human
genuine in a formal business written
voice so I want to say this to you the
formal business voice
it’s dead like dead dead there is no
longer any place for it in business
today I cannot find a single time when
it’s useful except if you want to
threaten someone if you want to threaten
someone go ahead and use a formal
written voice should the undersigned not
comply immediately with the
aforementioned conditions here with blah
blah blah if you want to threaten or
alienate or put the fear of God or the
courts into someone go ahead and use the
formal business voice if you want to do
pretty much anything else on the planet
use a conversational written voice I
don’t know if you’ve heard of Ellen
Siegel but he’s made a career out of
taking legal documents and simplifying
them and yet retaining all of the legal
weight and power I mention this because
it’s one of the most common arguments
that I hear if we write in a
conversational voice Shelly it won’t
stand up in court always a non lawyer
saying this to me by the way an Ellen
Segal describes his work as a means to
empathy clarity and transparency
building the humanity into
communications and I love that because
that right there is my issue with the
formal business voice and why I say it’s
dead it removes the humanity it takes
out the people the way that asks for you
and instead it shifts this kind of
third-person generic info user the
client it’s cold and it’s clinical and
it also removes responsibility and
accountability we’ve all heard it the
classic but covering corporate voice
mistakes were made
nobody made them they just happened like
magic or my favorite because pretty much
all of us have done it at some stage it
is recommended if you’ve written that
behenna come on I know you have it is
recommended if you ever wrote an essay
at university or a report at work it is
recommended right I’m like by whom
the universe it just is so I want to
tell you how I learned about this stuff
because I had been a writer for 20 years
masters degree published author all that
jazz and like most writers I had been
trained to use a wide vocab sculpted
sentences are for Soros I do love me a
good two Soros you’re with me see how we
like our words good writers love words
and we use them a lot I also really
believed that there were some times when
the formal voice was absolutely required
you probably believe that too that there
are times when we need to use a voice
that sounds academic or legal or
authoritative and that in order to do
that we have to use a formal writing
approach now I was on Great Barrier
Island with my family because that’s
where my father is from and we had hired
a man called vet domain to write a
document for us now this document has
legislative power it sits under the
Resource Management Act and it gives my
hapu a voice in everything that’s going
on in the region and we had come
together to look at a draft of this
document it had been emailed to me by
the way but I hadn’t opened it and
here’s why I fully expected that it was
gonna be long and boring and hard to
wade my way through and very
official-looking and lots of text that’s
what happens with formal documents set
what happens with you take a whole room
with a glass of wine enjoy yourself
it’s great stuff but when someone handed
me a printed copy of that document and
it was much shorter than I was expecting
is about 20 pages and I started flicking
through it there’s 20 pages long as much
shorter than I was expecting I thought
was gonna look like that I start
flicking through it and it was easy to
read
and it was easy to skim through and it
was easy to understand and even more
than that I could see myself in that I
could see my photo in that and that blew
my mind because at the same time is
sounding really human and easy for
anyone from my teenagers to my Nana to
understand it was going to have all of
this legal weight and until that moment
I didn’t know such a thing was possible
everything in my career up until that
point led me to believe that that wasn’t
the case now that signal is shift for me
since that moment I have trained
hundreds of people every year to stop
using the formal written business Evo’s
and instead to write in a more authentic
voice the formal business voice wastes
so much time not the least of which is
because it takes a long time to write it
a long time to read it
it’s very woefully formal equals
waffling I challenge you to find me a
document a formal document that doesn’t
use more words than as necessary to get
the point across
bring it I’ll give you my email address
after instead of using that boring
time-wasting voice I’ve now trained
people to use an authentic
conversational voice the way that we
talk to each other and express our ideas
really naturally that translates very
well into writing and I have them just
get rid of all of that waffle and I give
them examples and help them see the
issues that they’re having when they’re
writing now can I tell you what I’ve
learned about why we do this to
ourselves why we write things that are
so freaking painful to write and even
worse to read it’s about perception
perception on a couple of levels first
of all we are really worried when we
write stuff and send it out into the
world whether it’s an email or a report
for your boss or whatever you hit Send
that is a vulnerable experience what is
someone gonna think am I gonna look bad
am I gonna look good am I gonna look
stupid because we worry about that
so perception on that level and then a
second part of perception which is this
idea that we have that we can’t quite
nail down the reasons why the perception
that they want it written this way who’s
they because they have got a hell of a
lot of bad ratings mites before I go and
tell you is they your governance board
because when I asked them if they want
to do more reading than they do they
have to they say hell no is they a
government department who your
organization is answerable to because
they pay me good money to train them to
not be overly formal and not be wofully
and not write in a formal voice they
don’t want to read you being wofully and
overly formal
[Music]
and I guess there’s a third element of
perception to in that so many of us
spent all these years at university and
tens of thousands of dollars
having the perception drilled into us
that academic writing equals good
writing it doesn’t it does equal the
kind of writing that’s required in that
context and before all of the academics
in the room except for my friend over
here crucify me because I can I can feel
some glares of course you can have a
good academic writing of course you can
it’s just that unfortunately as we all
know most a lot of the time it’s not
done well so let me show you some
examples stop talking about it let’s see
what it looks like for yourself this is
from a credit card agreement from a bank
in Abu Dhabi have fun reading that did
you give up after three lines because
you just obviously yo the card maybe bla
bla bla bla bla turn the page that’s
pretty much what we do and read that I
have a version of this type of content
written by Ellen Siegel and it’s from a
one-page credit card agreement that’s
165 pages long did I mention that
I wish I could take credit for that
Ellen Segal a one-page credit card
agreement so let me ask you this if you
had those two documents side by side and
you had to sign one which one would you
feel more comfortable signing if you had
to read through one of them before you
signed it which one would you want to
read through if you had to have a
discussion with the company who wrote
that document if you needed to negotiate
something or you were having a problem
which company would you feel comfortable
going to which company would you trust
more
I love the answers it’s good let me give
you another example and I’m very sorry
sorry Hamilton City Council to throw you
under the bus but you did this to
yourselves
this was in the newspaper earlier this
year and it’s not a one-off I’m not
going to read that to you do you just
take the information and really quickly
and easily first glance you don’t have
to read anything twice I had to read it
a couple times can I tell you that it
could have been written like this
now writing it like this does not make
it less formal sorry does not make it
less official it’s clearly less formal
it doesn’t make it less legally binding
it doesn’t make it less professional
it’s still an official notice ticking a
box doing what it needs to do but it is
far more likely to be read and to be
understood and there is no reason why we
can’t be writing like that and many many
good organizations are doing it what I’m
talking about here is called plain
language or plain English and it’s been
around for a really long time it’s not
new and we know some things about a
written conversational voice as opposed
to the formal business voice we know
from decades of research it is shorter
it uses far fewer words it’s more
engaging it’s easier and faster for your
brain to process information presented
in a conversational voice than in their
formal voice and interestingly enough
the conversational voice deescalate
situations because the prompt the formal
business voice sounds like a pompous ass
and that it’s the last thing that you
want to do when tensions are high right
if you are mad at that company that made
that mistake and they send you a pompous
sounding email that does not fix your
problem plain language or plain English
it’s being used all around the world
it’s like I said it’s not new it’s used
in situations where things are life and
death and we’re important information is
vital to get to a wide audience it’s
used by the Federal Aviation
Administration the Aero spin or
aerospace and defense industry it’s used
by the World Health Organization the
Centers for Disease Control it’s used by
many governments all around the world to
varying levels of success but they’re
trying it’s very hard to change our
traditions and change our perceptions
there are US appellate court judges
doing amazing work in this space now
I’ve seen
nods I’ve heard some you know some
cheering me on some yes Shelley is
sitting them and the choir seats may be
feeling a little bit preached to who’s
with me like yep we’re with you
no arguments here excellent because I
have a message specifically for you in
my trainings I get to this point reruns
like yep yep cool we know we need to do
this this is what we want to see and
then someone pulls out their own
document and they look at it and go oh
but this one has to be written formally
so I want to talk to you about this
thing that I call our writer switch and
it’s something that we develop in our
brain as we learn how to write and to
express our ideas so all through
schooling we develop this thing that I
call our writers switch and as we go
throughout every day in our lives that’s
turned off and as soon as you pick up a
pen or put your fingers on a keyboard it
turns on instantly just like that you’re
not aware of it you don’t know that it’s
happening you don’t choose to make it
happen it’s been trained into us and
what happens when we flick that switch
is that a draw and the filing cabinet of
your brain opens up and that drawer is
full of all of the rules that you ever
learned about what makes good writing
all of the rules all of the conventions
all of the do’s and don’ts all of the
worries and fear and anxiety about
getting it right those all instantly
flood our minds and there’s something
else that happens and this is what’s
really intriguing to me when you flick
on that writer switch your reader self
the one who raised their hand a moment
ago the one who’s been nodding that read
herself leaves the room it’s like you’ll
read her self and your writer self have
never met because you’re like okay now
I’m writing there are things I must do
when I’m writing and you ignore all of
the things that your reader self wants
about documents that are easy to read
and fast to understand in process easy
to find the answers documents that have
the answers early on instead of making
you wade through lots of preamble all of
those things they leave the room so
my advice to you in order to help you
try and keep that writer switch turned
off is this right
like a reader not a writer right like a
reader because your reader self does not
want to read formal documents are you
ready to be insulted because I don’t
know if anyone’s done that for you yet
today I have to tell you you’re not
special like a whole room full of not
friends okay fine you’re special but
you’re not an exception to this rule the
things that you want as a reader because
you’re busy and because you’ve got lots
of stuff to read your readers that you
are writing forward they want those same
things you can trust that and I think
that somehow we think that each one of
us individually is an exception to that
rule like I’m a lazy reader I like
bullet points whatever we all do there’s
research to support that so right like a
reader right like a human because the
formal business voice is dead it’s
fossilized it’s shriveled you’re not
Yoda
[Applause]
whose services you pay for your
utilities company and insurance company
your phone company something like that
it’s got one and I want you to remember
a time when they frustrated you they got
something wrong they didn’t follow
through they provide a bad service they
drop the ball and as customers we hate
that right and those companies have a
small window to make things right with
us so let’s imagine that they send you
an apology email they have a couple of
options of how to go about this first
option fairly relaxed quite person or
something like this hey Shelly we’re
sorry we got the date wrong for setting
up the internet at your new home
not like this happened recently or
anything we know that was really
inconvenient thanks for letting us know
about the mistakes so we can fix it
we’ll do our best to make sure it
doesn’t happen again
Thanks your favorite internet provider
or they have a second option something
in a more formal business II kind of
voice because they want to sound more
professional dear valued customer it is
with regret that we write to express our
apologies for the recent error not our
recent error it was an unavoidable
disruption within our system due to a
service upgrade we apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused you
feel at all warm and fuzzy because it’s
the classic non apology and it’s what
the formal business voice lends itself
to they may as well have signed off with
sorry not sorry because that’s pretty
much how it feels we can all see it we
can feel it we can hear it it’s
practically impossible to sound human
genuine in a formal business written
voice so I want to say this to you the
formal business voice
it’s dead like dead dead there is no
longer any place for it in business
today I cannot find a single time when
it’s useful except if you want to
threaten someone if you want to threaten
someone go ahead and use a formal
written voice should the undersigned not
comply immediately with the
aforementioned conditions here with blah
blah blah if you want to threaten or
alienate or put the fear of God or the
courts into someone go ahead and use the
formal business voice if you want to do
pretty much anything else on the planet
use a conversational written voice I
don’t know if you’ve heard of Ellen
Siegel but he’s made a career out of
taking legal documents and simplifying
them and yet retaining all of the legal
weight and power I mention this because
it’s one of the most common arguments
that I hear if we write in a
conversational voice Shelly it won’t
stand up in court always a non lawyer
saying this to me by the way an Ellen
Segal describes his work as a means to
empathy clarity and transparency
building the humanity into
communications and I love that because
that right there is my issue with the
formal business voice and why I say it’s
dead it removes the humanity it takes
out the people the way that asks for you
and instead it shifts this kind of
third-person generic info user the
client it’s cold and it’s clinical and
it also removes responsibility and
accountability we’ve all heard it the
classic but covering corporate voice
mistakes were made
nobody made them they just happened like
magic or my favorite because pretty much
all of us have done it at some stage it
is recommended if you’ve written that
behenna come on I know you have it is
recommended if you ever wrote an essay
at university or a report at work it is
recommended right I’m like by whom
the universe it just is so I want to
tell you how I learned about this stuff
because I had been a writer for 20 years
masters degree published author all that
jazz and like most writers I had been
trained to use a wide vocab sculpted
sentences are for Soros I do love me a
good two Soros you’re with me see how we
like our words good writers love words
and we use them a lot I also really
believed that there were some times when
the formal voice was absolutely required
you probably believe that too that there
are times when we need to use a voice
that sounds academic or legal or
authoritative and that in order to do
that we have to use a formal writing
approach now I was on Great Barrier
Island with my family because that’s
where my father is from and we had hired
a man called vet domain to write a
document for us now this document has
legislative power it sits under the
Resource Management Act and it gives my
hapu a voice in everything that’s going
on in the region and we had come
together to look at a draft of this
document it had been emailed to me by
the way but I hadn’t opened it and
here’s why I fully expected that it was
gonna be long and boring and hard to
wade my way through and very
official-looking and lots of text that’s
what happens with formal documents set
what happens with you take a whole room
with a glass of wine enjoy yourself
it’s great stuff but when someone handed
me a printed copy of that document and
it was much shorter than I was expecting
is about 20 pages and I started flicking
through it there’s 20 pages long as much
shorter than I was expecting I thought
was gonna look like that I start
flicking through it and it was easy to
read
and it was easy to skim through and it
was easy to understand and even more
than that I could see myself in that I
could see my photo in that and that blew
my mind because at the same time is
sounding really human and easy for
anyone from my teenagers to my Nana to
understand it was going to have all of
this legal weight and until that moment
I didn’t know such a thing was possible
everything in my career up until that
point led me to believe that that wasn’t
the case now that signal is shift for me
since that moment I have trained
hundreds of people every year to stop
using the formal written business Evo’s
and instead to write in a more authentic
voice the formal business voice wastes
so much time not the least of which is
because it takes a long time to write it
a long time to read it
it’s very woefully formal equals
waffling I challenge you to find me a
document a formal document that doesn’t
use more words than as necessary to get
the point across
bring it I’ll give you my email address
after instead of using that boring
time-wasting voice I’ve now trained
people to use an authentic
conversational voice the way that we
talk to each other and express our ideas
really naturally that translates very
well into writing and I have them just
get rid of all of that waffle and I give
them examples and help them see the
issues that they’re having when they’re
writing now can I tell you what I’ve
learned about why we do this to
ourselves why we write things that are
so freaking painful to write and even
worse to read it’s about perception
perception on a couple of levels first
of all we are really worried when we
write stuff and send it out into the
world whether it’s an email or a report
for your boss or whatever you hit Send
that is a vulnerable experience what is
someone gonna think am I gonna look bad
am I gonna look good am I gonna look
stupid because we worry about that
so perception on that level and then a
second part of perception which is this
idea that we have that we can’t quite
nail down the reasons why the perception
that they want it written this way who’s
they because they have got a hell of a
lot of bad ratings mites before I go and
tell you is they your governance board
because when I asked them if they want
to do more reading than they do they
have to they say hell no is they a
government department who your
organization is answerable to because
they pay me good money to train them to
not be overly formal and not be wofully
and not write in a formal voice they
don’t want to read you being wofully and
overly formal
[Music]
and I guess there’s a third element of
perception to in that so many of us
spent all these years at university and
tens of thousands of dollars
having the perception drilled into us
that academic writing equals good
writing it doesn’t it does equal the
kind of writing that’s required in that
context and before all of the academics
in the room except for my friend over
here crucify me because I can I can feel
some glares of course you can have a
good academic writing of course you can
it’s just that unfortunately as we all
know most a lot of the time it’s not
done well so let me show you some
examples stop talking about it let’s see
what it looks like for yourself this is
from a credit card agreement from a bank
in Abu Dhabi have fun reading that did
you give up after three lines because
you just obviously yo the card maybe bla
bla bla bla bla turn the page that’s
pretty much what we do and read that I
have a version of this type of content
written by Ellen Siegel and it’s from a
one-page credit card agreement that’s
165 pages long did I mention that
I wish I could take credit for that
Ellen Segal a one-page credit card
agreement so let me ask you this if you
had those two documents side by side and
you had to sign one which one would you
feel more comfortable signing if you had
to read through one of them before you
signed it which one would you want to
read through if you had to have a
discussion with the company who wrote
that document if you needed to negotiate
something or you were having a problem
which company would you feel comfortable
going to which company would you trust
more
I love the answers it’s good let me give
you another example and I’m very sorry
sorry Hamilton City Council to throw you
under the bus but you did this to
yourselves
this was in the newspaper earlier this
year and it’s not a one-off I’m not
going to read that to you do you just
take the information and really quickly
and easily first glance you don’t have
to read anything twice I had to read it
a couple times can I tell you that it
could have been written like this
now writing it like this does not make
it less formal sorry does not make it
less official it’s clearly less formal
it doesn’t make it less legally binding
it doesn’t make it less professional
it’s still an official notice ticking a
box doing what it needs to do but it is
far more likely to be read and to be
understood and there is no reason why we
can’t be writing like that and many many
good organizations are doing it what I’m
talking about here is called plain
language or plain English and it’s been
around for a really long time it’s not
new and we know some things about a
written conversational voice as opposed
to the formal business voice we know
from decades of research it is shorter
it uses far fewer words it’s more
engaging it’s easier and faster for your
brain to process information presented
in a conversational voice than in their
formal voice and interestingly enough
the conversational voice deescalate
situations because the prompt the formal
business voice sounds like a pompous ass
and that it’s the last thing that you
want to do when tensions are high right
if you are mad at that company that made
that mistake and they send you a pompous
sounding email that does not fix your
problem plain language or plain English
it’s being used all around the world
it’s like I said it’s not new it’s used
in situations where things are life and
death and we’re important information is
vital to get to a wide audience it’s
used by the Federal Aviation
Administration the Aero spin or
aerospace and defense industry it’s used
by the World Health Organization the
Centers for Disease Control it’s used by
many governments all around the world to
varying levels of success but they’re
trying it’s very hard to change our
traditions and change our perceptions
there are US appellate court judges
doing amazing work in this space now
I’ve seen
nods I’ve heard some you know some
cheering me on some yes Shelley is
sitting them and the choir seats may be
feeling a little bit preached to who’s
with me like yep we’re with you
no arguments here excellent because I
have a message specifically for you in
my trainings I get to this point reruns
like yep yep cool we know we need to do
this this is what we want to see and
then someone pulls out their own
document and they look at it and go oh
but this one has to be written formally
so I want to talk to you about this
thing that I call our writer switch and
it’s something that we develop in our
brain as we learn how to write and to
express our ideas so all through
schooling we develop this thing that I
call our writers switch and as we go
throughout every day in our lives that’s
turned off and as soon as you pick up a
pen or put your fingers on a keyboard it
turns on instantly just like that you’re
not aware of it you don’t know that it’s
happening you don’t choose to make it
happen it’s been trained into us and
what happens when we flick that switch
is that a draw and the filing cabinet of
your brain opens up and that drawer is
full of all of the rules that you ever
learned about what makes good writing
all of the rules all of the conventions
all of the do’s and don’ts all of the
worries and fear and anxiety about
getting it right those all instantly
flood our minds and there’s something
else that happens and this is what’s
really intriguing to me when you flick
on that writer switch your reader self
the one who raised their hand a moment
ago the one who’s been nodding that read
herself leaves the room it’s like you’ll
read her self and your writer self have
never met because you’re like okay now
I’m writing there are things I must do
when I’m writing and you ignore all of
the things that your reader self wants
about documents that are easy to read
and fast to understand in process easy
to find the answers documents that have
the answers early on instead of making
you wade through lots of preamble all of
those things they leave the room so
my advice to you in order to help you
try and keep that writer switch turned
off is this right
like a reader not a writer right like a
reader because your reader self does not
want to read formal documents are you
ready to be insulted because I don’t
know if anyone’s done that for you yet
today I have to tell you you’re not
special like a whole room full of not
friends okay fine you’re special but
you’re not an exception to this rule the
things that you want as a reader because
you’re busy and because you’ve got lots
of stuff to read your readers that you
are writing forward they want those same
things you can trust that and I think
that somehow we think that each one of
us individually is an exception to that
rule like I’m a lazy reader I like
bullet points whatever we all do there’s
research to support that so right like a
reader right like a human because the
formal business voice is dead it’s
fossilized it’s shriveled you’re not
Yoda
[Applause]
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