I talk less and less.

That may seem odd for one so garrulous with his pen. You might think poor Jane, pestered by my perorations.

But no. More and more I keep silent. Not sullenly. Not (I’m pretty sure) stupidly. But because a) spoken words, beyond the requisite minimum, dissatisfy and b) few listeners hear what one’s saying.

There’s a c) too: until I’ve written, I don’t know what I think. Spoken words I blurt, often misspeaking; I may pander to be agreeable. But with my pen I ponder, interrogate each sentence as it forms: “Is that what you think? What you really think?”

It matters to me to say what I mean. Conversation for me is seldom casual. I can’t shrug off incoherence or sloppy articulation. I wince to lie.

Why, I wonder. It’s not as if I’m a public figure, whose words move the world. Why not just be sociable and gabble in the common manner?

Vanity, partly. I pride myself on my precision. With words, I’m like a spiffy dresser, who arranges every crease, down to his briefs. It gladdens him to know he’s well turned out. His neatness somehow counters the chaos of being.

I’m an indifferent dresser, verging on slovenly, but with words I’m a stickler. Solecisms afflict me like squeaking chalk. I recoil from such lazy disavowals as “You get the idea,” “You know what I mean.”

Partly, saying what I mean pleases me, as an archer delights in hitting the bullseye. Even if no one notices his accomplishment, he kvells, confident having done it once, he might again. Agreeable lucidity is my pointless ambition. (Most ambitions are pointless.) I may even swagger a little, like a young skateboarder doing fancy tricks.

Partly, spoken words cause trouble. Listeners misunderstand: either I’ve been unclear or they inattentive. They take offense or refute what I never said. Attempts to clarify degenerate into tussles, hard feelings. Beware the phrase, “It’s nothing personal.” Anything we say is personal: what we say is who we are.

Younger I was quite the chatterbox, cocky about my ability to say. I cringe recalling myself. More than once, my confidence was read as arrogance – I suppose it was arrogance. I’d yet to learn that good listeners are better liked than clever talkers. (Did Oscar Wilde have any friends, I wonder.)

I take care to keep my taciturnity polite. I remember my mother decrying non-talkers as “Silent Sam.” Adults who refuse to converse are showoffs of another sort. Obdurate silence looks a lot like contempt.

I envy amiable talkers. Pleasant words flow from them with an easy grace. Their inner editor tidies their remarks so they suit the moment, neither too many nor too few, neither banal nor blurry. Good talkers implicitly flatter their interlocutors. We smile after “a good conversation” as after a good meal.

If I did not write so much, maybe I’d talk more. I think of writing as talking. You are sitting at the edge of my bed; I am watching your reactions. I invite you to sample phrases as an eager baker offers cookies. The French have a phrase, “le mot juste,” we lack in English. We’re less finicky about “the word just right” in English because we have so many synonyms. Should I say exact, precise, accurate, correct, dead-on, etc.?

Our world is moving away from careful expression toward illiterate, gestural communication. How do you pronounce an emoji? Soon AI will be doing our talking for us, sparing us the hassle of precision. Nowadays precise talk may sound fussily old-fashioned. So I keep my mouth shut.