I couldn’t find a better place to share this; I was a little surprised that there isn’t a writing SIG of some kind here, but I figure other word nerds might find this interesting.
https://youtu.be/OV5J6BfToSw
The Q&A is just as fascinating.
https://youtu.be/7rYAnYXIhL0
As a long time Toastmaster, I have heard and spoken hundreds of speeches. Writing and speaking, like what Darwin said, are different skills. Speaking we learn pretty quickly from our parents and environment, writing takes more formal learning. Writing also presumes an audience not in your presence and a chance to revise your thoughts. Furthermore, posting anonymously to a digital medium like “talk” adds yet another dimension to writing. The truth is human communications. whether vocabulary, medium, or context is always evolving.
This was a very interesting lecture to me. Thank you for posting it.
The lecturer is Steven Pinker, He does not mention in this presentation that he wrote a book on this topic “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century”.
I found this book to be very helpful in improving my writing style.
He is a very interesting person, he has written books on a wide variety of topics which you can investigate by googling his name.