This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to write for the ear.

If you assume that whatever you write will be read out loud,

and you structure your writing to make that possible,

your writing will be more compelling and clear.

This week I'm sharing several of my favorite writing tips.

Whether you write for a living or not,

you may have to write reports or emails or articles for industry publications.

Certain tactics can make all writing better.

When I write these podcast scripts, I am obviously

writing them to be read out loud. That is the whole point of a podcast script. But even writing

that isn't designed to be recorded benefits from approaching it as if it would be.

That's because of how people actually process written language.

Many years ago, an editor told me, almost in passing,

that when people read things silently,

they are actually saying them in their heads.

As a result, writing that sounds better to the ear reads better, even if you never actually hear it. When I write these scripts, I practice reading them out loud.

When I do, I immediately see things that need to be edited.

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