He writes like he talks

I try to write the same way I talk. Primarily this is because I want the blog to be a conversation between you and me. A one-way conversation where you never get to interrupt me. Even so, if you were to read it out loud in some approximation of my voice, you should be able to say to yourself, yes, Bart wrote this.

Writing the same way you talk doesn't always work out, however. Two funny examples:

1. I was working with an old guy from Louisiana. But the way he pronounced it, he was from Loozy-anna. You'd think you were talking to Justin Wilson, only he wasn't giving you food. One day during a meeting, we were brainstorming and he was writing down what we were discussing. "What's da nex step?" he would ask. At this point, I told him the next step was to obtain approval from management. He literally wrote "Optain approval," because that's how he said it. He was writing the same way he talked. I still crack the hell up thinking about that. "Lemme optain some dinnuh on mah way home," I tell Mrs. Bart before she tells me to lay off the accent already.

2. Just this evening, whilst eating at Chipotle, I got to admire one of the perils of learning English as a second language. It doesn't make a lot of sense when you look at it, but imagine a typical Chipotle employee reading it out loud, and you'll get the idea.

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