Recently there has developed a great deal of interest in the differences between written and spoken language. I joined this trend a little more than a year ago, and have been exploring not only what the specific differences are, but also the reasons why they might exist. The approach I have taken has been to look for differences between the situations and processes involved in speaking on the one hand and writing on the other, and to speculate on how those differences might be responsible for the observable differences in the output, ~ a t happens when we write.
