I always enjoy your articles, Sean, and I see you as a good communicator. Obviously, one shouldn't write the way they speak if they can't speak coherently, or if they rely too much on gesture.

The precept is best understood in contrast to the way too many academics write--in long and convoluted sentences full of jargon, sentences you have to read three times to find the subject and the verb. Most of those people can explain their thoughts coherently aloud, but when writing for their peers they lapse into the bloated, pretentious language Ken Macrorie called "Engfish."

The difficulty of truly writing like you talk becomes apparent when you try to write natural-sounding dialog. (I'll do an article on that when I've got time.) Great playwrights are a very special breed.