According to Kathy Sierra, Conversational writing kicks formal writing’s ass:
A study from the Journal of Educational Psychology, issue 93 (from 2000), looked at the difference in effectiveness between formal vs. informal style in learning. In their studies, the researchers (Roxana Moreno and Richard Mayer) looked at computer-based education on botany and lightning formation and ‘compared versions in which the words were in formal style with versions in which the words were in conversational style.’Their conclusion was:
In five out of five studies, students who learned with personalized text performed better on subsequent transfer tests than students who learned with formal text. Overall, participants in the personalized group produced between 20 to 46 percent more solutions to transfer problems than the formal group.They mention other related, complimentary studies including:
… people read a story differently and remember different elements when the author writes in the first person (from the ‘I/we’ point of view) than when the author writes in the third person (he, she, it, or they). (Graesser, Bowers, Olde, and Pomeroy, 1999).Research summarized by Reeves and Nass (1996) shows that, under the right circumstances, people ‘treat computers like real people.’
So one of the theories on why speaking directly to the user is more effective than a more formal lecture tone is that the user’s brain thinks it’s in a conversation, and therefore has to pay more attention to hold up its end! Sure, your brain intellectually knows it isn’t having a face-to-face conversation, but at some level, your brain wakes up when its being talked with as opposed to talked at. And the word ‘you’ can sometimes make all the difference.