In Writing for Broadcast, Kern talks about the difference between essay in writing and essay in radio, and the differences the two have and the proper way to deliver something orally as oppose to delivering it through writing. He emphasizes to “write the way you speak”, saying that, “when you are on the air, you are communicating with one person at a time” (27). In The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto, when first reading it, it’s actually hard to read at all. It starts with, “about two years ago ellie and I decided we needed a new mattress or maybe ellie decided it because i didn’t pay much attention to the problem (113). The lack of capitalization, punctuation, and odd gaps in sentences makes it jarring for our mind to read. But when I read it out loud, it sounded natural, like the way someone would tell their friend a story. The gaps were pauses in speech, pauses of thought. Capitalization and the sort didn’t matter when it was said aloud. Antin’s piece is not meant to be read, but to be spoken, to be listened to.
And to capture that way of real life speech, Kern offers some rules and guidelines. He says again and again to keep things simple, from the adjectives you use to sentence structure. He says, “Keep Sentences short… The desire to pack information often results in sentences larded with clauses that separate the subject and the verb” (33). Basically, what he’s saying is that when someone is listening to something, they can only hear something once, unlike reading where you can go back and reread things if there was something you missed. You need to keep your sentences simple so listeners will be able to follow the flow of the story without any confusion. Antin certainly compliments this use of simplicity and short sentences, his story very choppy in writing. One such instance is, “she said no so i said forget custom made custom made is for people who are geniuses” (119). The sentences are choppy and not at all how you should ever write, but this is exactly how people speak when they are telling a story, and that’s what must be conveyed here.