| Actually, a far more direct "charitable reading" of that is: A. regardless of how good someone is at public speaking, it is largely independent of their writing skill. An additional possible inference from the article is: B. they may/should find it significantly more efficient to impart those or even more ideas in writing than in speech. That is, some aspect of writing itself is simply more efficient than speech for transfer of idea information. However, I do agree that pg's article does seem to gloss over, 1. the binding effect of emotion to ideas. Emotion is far easier to impart and create via public speaking due to intonation, pauses, story-telling, comedy, body language etc (not even going to add side channels like slides, though they are likely important). Several studies have shown that, for example, comedy is an extremely strong means to reinforce the transfer of new information or complex ideas due to the body's physical and biochemical response. 2. audience interaction does not have to be negative or neutral, but can often reveal how much is new information or what those participants value the most. Of course, ultimately, to expect pg to cover even a fraction of the full dynamics of public speech and language writing in one blog article maybe is asking a little too much :) |