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I unironically read a Dale Carnegie book. I’ve been avoiding him like the plague (I know, in times like these not very fashionable to say) because in high school I had to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers which I think took some insights from How to Win Friends and Influence People. The idea of friendship being something to be won like chess seemed (and still does!) disgusting.

This Speech book proved to be very halpful. The general advice presented in this book is pretty aplicable to writing-especially for blog posts and other “casual” writing.

Here’s the quick takeaways:

On Yourself

  • See yourself accomplished. Imagine your speech was well recieved.
  • Be yourself. This is one of those advices that’s easier said than done. Mimicking others is how we learn, but don’t do this out of fear of being yourself or inspite of yourself. People are here to listen to you, not someone else.
  • Be passionate about a subject. Choose a topic YOU are actually interested in.
  • Be knowledable about your subject. Don’t make a speech about the dangers of green house gas emisssions if you know nothing about green house gas. Sure the subject sounds smart, but if you know nothing about it, you’ll look ignorant.
  • Make sure the topic is relevant to you. It should be something you’ve had expirence with
  • Exude confidence (but not boastfulness). Confidence is more convincing unfortunately than being factually correct.

On Your Audience

  • Know your audience. If you’re making a speech to a specific highschool, try to learn a bit about the school and include it in the speech.
  • Keep the audience engaged. Ask them questions or have them participate in a demonstration.
  • Be attentive. Make sure your audience understands you and you them.

ON Preparing the Speech

  • Generate an idea of what you want to talk about
  • Collect data. This could be magazines, interviews, videos etc.
  • Create a rough outline. What is your objective? How do you accomplish this objective?
  • Never memorize your speech. It’ll make the speech sound robotic.

On The Speech: Structure

  • Your speech should resemble the outline of an essay. It should have an introduction, body and conclusion.
  • Have only one important objective. Don’t try to tackle all the ways Unions are important. Ratherd think of one good reason.
  • Back up this reason with only a few points. Too many and you’ll confuse and/or bore your audience.
  • Be clear. Example: My first point is keeping wages competitive. While it is fround upon in academic writing, in speaking it is okay to say “in conclusion/to conclude”.
  • Stay on topic. Make sure all points made and all examples laid out are relevant to the objective.
  • In your concluding remarks, make sure to state why what you’re saying matters. Summarize previous points.

On The Speech: Clarity

  • Use your expierence. All examples need not be numbers based. In arguing for a more inclusive work enviroment, you could talk about a time when you felt unwelcome. Using lived expierences, human experiences, makes the speech more relateable and therefore more memmorable but also more importantly easier to understand.
  • Aside from your expiriences you could also ask for your audience to back up your point with their expiriences. “Anyone had someone say something truly vile to them on social media that hurt them?”. They will help you clarify your points.
  • Use sensory descriptors. Instead of saying “547 trombones were carried by one man” you could say “547 large and exceptionally heavy trombones were carried by one short and wiry old man”. Another example: “The putrid smell invading our noses from the plant leak turns us off from ever wanting to go back to the park”.
  • Be visual. Use your arms to describe just how tall the 9ft lady was. Demonstrate the man moving slower than a snail by slowly walking from one end of the stage to the other.
  • Use inclusive and accessible language. “The ire of such a sophrasyne solipsist couldn’t be immured in reason” has a lot of SAT words but also isn’t easy to understand “No one could understand how such a calm , collected, sound and admittedly self centered person was so angry” is better. Speak to be understood first.
  • If the talk is technical, still make sure the least technical person at your speach can get a general understanding of what you’re saying. “Making sites moble first is a better way to establish responsiveness in your site” could reach a larger audience with “making a sites easy to see on mobile phones will make it easier to translate the site for seeing on even bigger screens like iPads and laptops”.

Concluding Remarks

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book. It’s an interesting insight in late 1900’s style writing. His book reads as if you are taking a private lesson in public speaking. The tone is reminiscent of Pimsleur’s audio courses. And I found the advice useful as good general communication advice

This is the second book I’ve read about writing (I know it’s technically speaking).