He was what I wasn’t.
One of my ex-bosses was a true wordsmith … fretting over each word until
he had the unique one that best matched its specific purpose in the sentence.
His writing was precise.
And impressive.
And it included a lot of words that weren’t accessible.
His writing left no doubt that he was the smartest person in
the room.
But his writing didn’t connect with our audience.
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To clarify, the finished product was not terrible. Just more suited to academia than business.
Interestingly, he communicated brilliantly in person, He just over-worked the written word.
He was a great example for "write like you talk" but he couldn't help himself when it came to words on paper.
Did they laugh? or did they snicker? or giggle? or chuckle? or guffaw?He might've started with laugh, but, if upon reflection, he felt it was a loud, boisterous laugh, he would change it to guffaw.
He would go through every piece word-by-word. And when the process was done, every sentence had been wordsmithed into a more precise message ... and that became the message to be distributed.
He was a visionary leader with a big personality. When he was done wordsmithing, he would be proud and excited about the piece. And his enthusiasm would be infectious.
I would get caught up in that.
I wish I had fought harder to make the copy less correct and more effective.
I believe today I would.
When I was a VP in a small agency I led our PR writing team. Part of my job was to review/edit everything they wrote for our clients and to, as the agency owner put it, "help them become better writers." Interestingly, I had the opposite problem that you describe here - the writers constantly wanted to use bigger words and longer sentences when more everyday language would communicate just as well or, more often, better to the target audience. I constantly said to them, "Write like you speak."
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