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Do's and Don'ts of Writing With a Conversational Voice

The purpose of your content should be to develop a bond with your audience and encourage them to come back for more. For many topics and brands, a formal, informative tone drives readers away instead of pulling them in. In contrast, a conversational tone addresses your audience directly and allows them to become part of the message. Not every piece of content calls for conversational writing, but if you want your readers to be enthusiastic about your posts, bear these do's and don’ts in mind.

Do's

Write in the Second-Person Active Voice

The third-person and the passive voice distance you from your readers and can sometimes sound awkward. In contrast, using “you” and active phrases tells readers that you are addressing them and inspires them to take action once they have read your post.

Use Contractions

Contractions give your writing a natural sound and feel as if you are conversing with your readers rather than informing them.

Keep It Simple

Your audience doesn't want to reach for the dictionary every few minutes just to get to the end of your content. Use everyday language, avoiding jargon, favoring short words over long ones, and explaining any complex terms readers may not understand.

Read Conversational Writing

A great way to feel more comfortable with conversational writing is to read as many (good) examples as you can find. Check out a variety of blogs to gain a better perspective of different writers' approaches and styles. This will allow you to see various techniques in action and will inspire your own content.

Break Some Rules

Your writing should create the sense that you are having a conversation. Starting some sentences with “and” or “but,” ending with prepositions, and using sentence fragments are a few examples suggested by Copyjuice.

Don’ts

Don’t Break All the Rules

Your content sets an example for the quality consumers can expect from the brand. A conversational voice is far from an excuse for sloppy writing; you must still follow basic grammar, capitalization, and punctuation rules and stick to style guidelines.

Don’t Write Like You Speak

Writing conversation and writing conversationally are two very different things. If you listen closely to how people speak, perhaps by recording yourself in a conversation, you will realize that natural speech is often repetitive, lacking clarity, and filled with unnecessary words. All this makes for very poor writing. Conversational writing it much more eloquent and should be carefully crafted and designed to speak to your reader.

Don’t Use Long Sentences

Long, complex sentences require energy to follow and increase the formality of your content. If there is a shorter way of saying something, use it. Printwand recommends using sentences that are 35 words or less. But if it is not possible to split the sentence, make reading easier by using punctuation such as commas, semicolons, and dashes.

There are varying levels of formality possible for conversational writing. Some clients prefer an informal, chatty style, whereas others may want a professional tone that isn't too dry. Whatever the case, the above dos and don’ts always apply.

Topics: Conversational Writing

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