What They Hear Matters More than What You Say

I met my wife when we were college students, studying abroad in Italy. On weekends, we would visit famous cities, cathedrals, and art museums with a small pack of American students. My wife was an Art History minor. I was a boy trying to impress a pretty girl.

Before our little pack traveled, I would read up on the cities, churches, and artworks we were visiting. Then I would endeavor to impress with my newfound factual repertoire. 

“Actually, …,” I would say as we looked at some architectural wonder or Renaissance masterpiece, and then I would share some fact that I had learned or insight I had gleaned from my reading. 

Dear reader, it didn’t work. 

The pretty girl I meant to impress didn’t see me as a genius with remarkable insights. She saw me as a know-it-all who took up too much space. The girls in our group actually started teasing me, saying “actually” in pontifical tones whenever I was around. 

Eventually, thank goodness, my future wife realized the truth: I wasn’t a jerk; just a boy who was trying way too hard. I really did want to share what I was learning with her. But I was going about it all wrong. I had yet to learn a fundamental lesson for developing writers and would-be romantics alike … 

What they hear matters more than what you say.  

Imagine this: You write a sentence that you consider extraordinary, erudite, and exquisitely expressive of the impression of intelligence you intended to create.  But the person you send it to reads it and says, “He sounds like a self-important jerk.”

Who’s right? 

Unless you’re writing purely for self-expressive purposes, your reader’s interpretation of what you’re saying matters more than your own. In the wise words of communication strategist Michael Maslansky, “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” 

If you’re writing to inform, persuade, direct, or explain, you have to use words, concepts, metaphors, and even a voice and style that your readers will readily understand. Every writing guide in the world will tell you to “write clearly.” This is what that actually means: Write so that your message becomes clear to your reader, not just to you. 

How? 

1. Speak your reader’s language.  I don’t just mean English, French, or Swahili. I mean the words your reader can’t help but think and dream in—the nouns and verbs they use every day. Don’t use jargon unless you’re writing for a professional audience that treats said jargon as lingo (and even then, go easy). Don’t inflate your own vocabulary in an effort to impress: Think of me making a fool of myself in front of my future wife! Assume that no one prefers language that’s needlessly complicated or dense. As a rule, shorter is better. So is simpler.
    

2. Use concepts, metaphors, examples, and analogies that are familiar to your readers. If you’re writing to soccer players, feel free to use analogies plucked from the pitch. If you’re writing for theatre fans, switch that pitch to a stage or a page. In any case, use concepts that are already well aligned in your readers’ minds. If you want to be understood, you have to build upon—and with—the structures and tools they already know.
    

3. Err on the side of overexplaining. Remember that the more you know about a subject, the more likely you are to overestimate what other people know about it—and the more likely you are to talk past them and wind up sounding self-important or worse. (This is known as “the curse of knowledge,” and you can learn more about it below.) Start by explaining too much, then cut back where you can or must.

Often, the effort to explain a topic to someone else will improve your own thinking about it. “You don’t really know a subject until you can teach it,” as the old adage goes. 

In any case, communication can’t fulfill its function until a reader or a listener receives your message and interprets it the way you hope they will. What you say is the start. But what they hear is the end that matters most.

Want to learn more? Explore “the curse of knowledge,” as noted above.

Need help with a writing project? Drop me a line.