When you read a book or article, do you “hear yourself” reading the words in your head or move your lips without making a sound (sub-vocalizating)? Doing this helps you have conversations while you write — without making a sound.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m deaf or not, but I’ve always “heard” people’s voices in my head as well as my own. If I didn’t have my hearing aids turned on, my head hears a person’s voice while he or she speaks. It sounds very real.
Hearing voices in my head has become such a habit that whenever I have hearing tests — I’m not sure if I heard the sound or if my head tricked me as it expects to hear something. It doesn’t take much to play tricks when you repeatedly hearing beeps and buzzes.
As I write this blog entry, I hear these words in my head and it sounds conversational. To verify you’re writing conversationally, read your writing out loud and see how it flows. When I stumble or feel awkward during the reading, then it’s a sign to make edits.
Many formal publications — newspapers and magazines — used formal writing that rarely appeared in the first person or in a conversational way. The Internet and blogging changed that. Now you see this writing in the big publications including The New York Times. Publishers learned that conversational writing tends to be easier to read and more enjoyable.
