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I rewrote an email seven times a few months ago before I figured out what was wrong with it.
Not the content. The content was fine. Good point, decent structure, nothing technically broken.
It just sounded like I was presenting. Like I'd walked into a boardroom, clicked to slide three, and started reading bullet points off a screen. Very professional and also very forgettable.
Here's how I caught it. I read it out loud, and about halfway through I stopped and thought, wait, what? I don't talk like this.
Nobody talks like this. I don't say "leverage" over dinner.
I don't say "circle back" to a friend.
But there it was, in my own newsletter, wearing a suit I never bought.
You know the kind of writing I mean.
Technically correct. Grammatically tidy.
Completely lifeless.
It reads like it was written for an audience of one a boss, a client, someone to impress, instead of a person actually sitting there, coffee in hand, deciding whether to keep reading.
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Sound familiar?
It should.
Almost everyone does this the second they think someone important might read their work. Don’t lie to yourself and tell me otherwise.
The voice gets stiffer. The sentences get longer. The personality quietly leaves the room.
Then something happened that fixed it for me, and it wasn't a writing trick. I just imagined texting the point to a friend instead of emailing it to a client.
Same information.
Completely different sentence.
"We should circle back on next steps" became "let's figure this out tomorrow."
Same idea. Actual human said it this time.
Here's the takeaway, and it's a simple test: read your sentence out loud.
If you'd never say it to a friend across a table, you're presenting, not talking.
Rewrite it the way you'd actually say it. Every time.
Talking gets read. Presenting gets skimmed.
Stephen
