Some writing
instructors advise aspiring writers to read aloud what they’ve written. They
say doing so will reveal awkward phrasing, faulty rhythm, poor word choice, and
other sins.
It’s true.
Sometimes.
Reading
aloud is particularly apt when writing poetry, especially if that poetry is to
be recited. But reading prose aloud isn’t always a good idea.
Having
written a ton and a half of advertising copy over the course of some four
decades, I learned long ago that writing words to be vocalized—as in radio or
television commercials—is altogether different from writing words to be read—as
in printed advertisements.
That’s
because the brain is much more adept than the vocal cords.
Your mind
can wrap itself around more complex sentence constructions, accept more
assonance and consonance and alliteration without getting tongue-tied, easily
switch rhythmic patterns to follow dialogue, fill in the blanks purposely
created by ambiguity and other techniques to involve readers, understand
sentence fragments, and on and on and on.
The written
word and the spoken word are entirely different things. Different languages,
almost. The trick, in both cases, is using words well. Go ahead and read your
work aloud. But don’t believe for a minute that your mouth is a better arbiter
of what’s right in writing than your brain.
