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I have the following sentence:

I haven't had a chance to talk in person about how much I've grown my passion in our common interest--art.

Question:

  1. Is there a single word to replace "talk in person" above?
  2. Is there any better place to put "in person" in above sentence?

EDIT: Thanks @Mari-LouA for your support. As she mentions in the comment below, I'd also like to know if I can improve my sentence grammatically. If I can improve the sentence by rearranging the words or replacing few words to be more concise, that would be great!

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  • Your question should also include this: How can I improve this sentence grammatically? I know something is wrong because at ELU someone told me. She mentioned something about "word-order". What does "word-order" mean? Are there any other mistakes?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 8:57
  • To begin with: "...how much my passion has grown"
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 8:59
  • @Mari-LouA The situation is this. I have a mentor who guided and introduced me a lot of elements in art. Due to geographical limitations, I wasn't able to talk to my mentor in person about how much I've learnt in art.
    – Sean Pierre
    Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 9:06
  • Some advice. Don't change your original question now. Otherwise users might not understand where the problem is.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 9:21
  • @Mari-LouA A question should address a single problem or at least problems that are very related. As the question is basically about word-request, i.e. another word for "talk in person" this question should not primarily discuss word-order or other errors. It's fine, though, to mention these things in comments to make OP aware of this or, alternatively, edit the question to fix minor errors which do not affect the question. If a comment becomes obsolete it can be flagged as such and will be deleted accordingly.
    – Em1
    Commented Aug 7, 2013 at 7:45

4 Answers 4

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There is nothing wrong with "talk in person" or "talk face to face" unless you want to limit the number of words in Twitter or you send a telegram.
And when we say talk it is not understood that it is face to face, it can be by phone, by a series of emails, videochat and so on.

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There isn't a verb for "talking in person," since talking in person is still talking. If you say "when we talked" most of the people would think of when you talked in person, or the last time you talked. If you are referring to talking on the phone, and you see the other person confused from "when we talked," you would precise saying "when we talked on the phone."

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  • 1
    Although it is possible to say: "talk face to face" if you don't want to use the phone but it's even wordier than the OP's original sentence.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 27, 2013 at 13:17
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I haven't had the opportunity to discuss with you, (about) how much my passion in art has grown ever since I started studying in your classes.

I've changed your original sentence quite radically, this version may or may not be what you are looking for. No doubt, someone will dissect it to pieces but it is a starting point!

Addendum

To discuss means to have a conversation with another person. As I speak Italian I am aware that this verb can and does create problems for speakers of other Romance languages as the verb, discuss, usually has negative connotations in their language. Discussione in Italian is quite similar to the English definition of argument and quarrel. However, in English, discussion is often used when two or more people are especially interested in a topic or a subject. Sometimes discussions are calm, well mannered and polite. Sometimes they can become over excited, passionate and heated, which eventually will lead onto an argument (a very common occurrence in Italy!).

In the case of Sean Pierre, I chose the verb discuss purposely, because he expressed a desire to talk to his mentor, in person, and to thank him for communicating and transmitting his passion in the fine arts. Indubitably, the two would have continued their conversation, and most likely to have remained on the topic of art.

Therefore, discuss, for all the reasons I stated above, performs this task (talk in person) more effectively than to talk.

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As @kiamlaluno suggests, the single word to replace "talk in person" is "talk".

"In person" is redundant. So is "common interest." I would suggest rewriting as follows:

I haven't had a chance to tell you how much my passion for art has grown.

As an aside, you should say "passion for art" rather than "passion in art".

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