Why You Must Stop Writing for the Eye

We have all been there. You’re sitting in a pew, a lecture hall, or a conference room. The speaker is clearly brilliant. The research is impeccable. The slides are professional. But ten minutes in, you feel a fog descending. Your eyes are open, but your brain has checked out. You find yourself wondering what’s for dinner or checking your phone under the table.

Why does this happen?

Usually, it isn’t a lack of interest in the subject matter. It is a fundamental mismatch between the speaker’s "code" and the listener’s "hardware."

The speaker is delivering a written document orally.

In communication theory, this is known as the Orality-Literacy Gap. It is the invisible wall that stands between a speaker’s preparation and an audience’s transformation. If you want to move people—whether you are a preacher, a CEO, or a teacher, you have to understand that the human brain processes the spoken word fundamentally differently than it processes a page.

We Are Wired for Sound

To bridge the gap, we first have to look at our biology, where human speech is a primary instinct. It emerges naturally in toddlers without formal instruction. Our brains have specialised regions (Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area) dedicated to producing and understanding phonological units.

Writing, however, is a "hack." It is a recently acquired cultural skill, developed only about 5,000 years ago. Reading requires the brain to co-opt neural circuits meant for vision and object recognition and retrain them to recognise abstract symbols.

When you stand up to speak, you are engaging an audience's primary sign system. If you use the structures of the secondary system (writing), you are essentially forcing your audience to perform "simultaneous interpreting." You are asking them to take complex, high-dependency written code and translate it into understandable oral units in real-time.

Eventually, their "working memory" (WM) hits a bottleneck and they simply run out of cognitive RAM to keep up with you.

The Linguistic Architecture of a "Boring" Speech

Linguists distinguish between 'Written Style' and 'Oral Style' based on something called dependency distance. This is the number of words between syntactically connected elements, like a subject and its verb.

In formal writing, we love "embedded information." We use subordinate clauses, passive voice, and Latinate jargon. We write things like:

"The decision, which was reached after several hours of deliberation by the committee members who had travelled from various regions, was ultimately deferred."

On a page, a reader can slow down or re-read that sentence. But in a speech, the listener is trapped in a "fleeting" stream of audio. By the time the speaker reaches the word "deferred," the listener has forgotten what the "decision" was about.

The Five Markers of the "Oral Style"

Effective communicators, the ones who seem to "speak naturally" even when they’ve prepared for weeks, instinctively use five linguistic markers that align with the brain's natural constraints.

1. Sentence Brevity and Strategic Fragmentation

The "listening span" is much shorter than the "reading span." Oral style prioritises sentences between 8 and 16 words. But more importantly, it embraces fragments. Those fragments function as "stark declarations." They allow a fact to hang in the air. They give the audience permission to stop processing and start feeling.

2. Early and Active Verb Placement

The ear searches for the action. In a live setting, using the active voice (e.g., "The leader decided" rather than "A decision was made") reduces the cognitive load required to identify the agent of action. It stimulates the auditory cortex and keeps the momentum moving forward.

3. The Power of Contractions

Written prose often avoids "don't" or "it's" in favour of the formal "do not" or "it is." But spoken language relies on contractions for rhythm. Contractions create a "well-ironed" flow that signals to the audience that this is a conversation, not a citation.

4. Pragmatic and Mental State Markers

We often think phrases like "I think," "we believe," or "you might wonder" are "filler" words. But they aren't. Linguistically, these are essential for Theory of Mind processing. They help the listener track the speaker's internal mentalizing process. They build a cognitive map of the speaker's intent, making the message easier to follow.

5. Personal Pronouns and Direct Address

Formal writing is often third-person and objective. Orality is personal. It uses "you," "we," "us," and "me." This fosters a sense of community. It shifts the message from "transmission of data" to "shared experience."

The Psychology of the "Smoke Screen"

Beyond linguistics lies the psychology of trust. Research into Authenticity Perception shows that a scripted, formal delivery creates what is known as a "smoke screen of professionalism." When a speaker is too busy remembering exact words or maintaining an unnatural, "polished" tone, they lose their Relational Presence. The audience perceives a "performance" rather than a "person." We are wired to detect incongruence. If your words are deep and emotional, but your delivery is stiff and tied to a manuscript, the audience's brain will prioritise your body language over your words. They will feel that you are "in your own head" rather than "in the room with them." Authenticity isn't about being unprepared; it’s about Strategic Authenticity. It’s the intentional alignment of heart, voice, and presence. It’s the willingness to be vulnerable, to pause, and to respond to the "raised eyebrows" in the third row.

The "Internalisation" Method: Moving Beyond the Page

How do you maintain deep intellectual substance without a word-for-word script? You move from memorisation to internalisation. The world’s best speakers use thought-mapping instead of traditional paragraphs. A thought map serves as a visual placeholder for ideas. It allows you to see the "skeleton" of your argument, the core bones, and the "clusters" of stories or facts that hang off them.

This aligns with how the brain stores information: not as a linear transcript, but as a network of associated concepts. When you speak from a map, you are free to navigate the message with flexibility. You can skip a section if time is short, or lean into a point if the audience is leaning in.

The Scripture Sculpture

For preachers, this is often called the "Scripture Sculpture" process. You start with the "raw wood" (the text), find the "skeleton" (the original author's logic), and then distil the "heart" (the central proposition). Once you have the heart and the purpose bridge, you don't need to read a paper. You are simply telling the audience what you have found.

Tactical Rules for Writing for the Ear

If you must write a script, write it for the lungs, not the eyes.

• Punctuating for Breath: If you want to use a comma, use a period instead. Every period is a forced pause.

• The Rhythmic Triad: The human ear loves patterns of three. "Veni, vidi, vici." It feels complete. It feels musical.

• Anaphora: In writing, repeating the same word at the start of sentences is a mistake. In speaking, it's a tool of power. Think of Churchill's "We shall fight..."

• Signposting: Listeners don't have bold text or headings. You must give them verbal directions: "This is the most important part," or "Here is the second reason."

• The "Read Aloud" Test: Physically speak every sentence as you type it. If you stumble while reading it, your audience will stumble while hearing it.

  
  

Conclusion: The Future of the Spoken Word

In an age of informational noise, the "Orality vs. Literacy" gap is a massive opportunity. The speakers who succeed in the future won't be those with the most data, but those who can weave deep substance into the fabric of a natural, human conversation. By embracing the markers of oral style, moving from the manuscript to the thought-map, and prioritising relational presence, we can bridge the gap between ancient truths and modern listeners.