Writing and speech

Richard Lanham:

Much has been written about prose that gains authority through the speaking voice. It gains still more by manipulating time scale. We condense ten hours’ writing and thinking into one hour’s reading. The best ad-libbers always prepare their spontaneity. Writing’s advantage, as a presentation of self, is not that it allows us to adopt the mannerisms of speech but that it allows us to adopt the tempo of speech without its hesitant waste.

Style: An Anti-Textbook, 2nd. ed. (Philadelphia, Paul Dry Books, 2007).

Also from this book
“Slow Reading”
“The deepest motive for writing”