If you want people to learn and remember what you write, say it conversationally. This isn't just for short informal blog entries and articles, either. We're talking books. Assuming they're meant for learning, and not reference, books written in a conversational style are more likely to be retained and recalled than a book on the same topics written in a more formal tone. Most of us know this intuitively, but there are some studies to prove it.
What most people mean when they say "write the way you talk" is something like, "the way you talk when you're explaining something to a friend, filtering out the 'um', 'you know', and 'er' parts, and editing for the way you wish you'd said it."
I've talked about the danger of writing a book from the perspective of what it will do for you vs. what it means for the user in How to write a non-fiction bestseller.
Much of the time, it's an indication that the author is thinking way too much about himself, and how he will be perceived.
Sometimes it's simply because so many technical books are written that way, and it's just conventional inertia ("if the other books are written like that, and they sell, this must be the way it's done")
"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.
"... 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).
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!
your brain wakes up when its being talked with as opposed to talked at. And the word "you" can sometimes make all the difference.
v

irtually all brains learn the same way--through emotional response (which in turn triggers the brain to pay more attention and possibly record to long-term storage).
>
> And engaging in a conversation has the potential to turn up the emotional gain much more than a dry, lifeless text or lecture.
If your brain had a bumper sticker, it would say:

I heart conversation.
Posted by Kathy Sierra on September 6, 2005 | Permalink
And from another perspective, consider what former Wired editor Constance Hale wrote in Sin and Syntax:

"The second-person pronoun (you) lets the author hook the reader as if in conversation. Call it cozy. Call it confiding. You is a favorite of the Plain English folks, who view it as an antidote to the stiff impersonality of legalese and urge bureaucrats to write as if speaking to the public...

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