Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate Whenever it rains the farmers hope for a nice slow rain which can soak deep into the ground. They don’t want hard and fast rain as it will just run off and not help anything. A speech, like a rain, will not do anybody much…
PAUSE AND POWER The true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. —George Saintsbury, on English Prose Style, in…
Change of Tempo Produces Emphasis Any big change of tempo is emphatic and will catch the attention. You may scarcely be conscious that a passenger train is moving when it is flying over the rails at ninety miles an hour, but if it slows down very suddenly to a ten-mile gait your attention will be…
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PACE Hear how he clears the points o’ Faith Wi’ rattlin’ an’ thumpin’! Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, He’s stampin’ an’ he’s jumpin’. —Robert Burns, Holy Fair. The Latins have bequeathed to us a word that has no precise equivalent in our tongue, therefore we have accepted it, body…
Continual Change of Pitch is Nature’s Highest Method In our search for the principles of efficiency we must continually go back to nature. Listen—really listen—to the birds sing. Which of these feathered tribes are most pleasing in their vocal efforts: those whose voices, though sweet, have little or no range, or those that, like the…
I’m not talking about marketing here, but the pitch that you use in your speech. Do you remember the music teacher using a special instrument (known as a pitch pipe)to ensure that everyone was on tune? EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PITCH Speech is simply a modified form of singing: the principal difference being in the…
There are no steel-riveted rules of emphasis. It is not always possible to designate which word must, and which must not be emphasized. One speaker will put one interpretation on a speech, another speaker will use different emphasis to bring out a different interpretation. No one can say that one interpretation is right and the…
When you have mastered the mechanics of speech you will no longer be troubled with monotony. The complete knowledge of the principles and the ability to apply them will give you great variety in your powers of expression. But they cannot be mastered and applied by thinking or reading about them—you must practise, practise, PRACTISE….
Our English has changed with the years so that many words now connote more than they did originally. This is true of the word monotonous. From “having but one tone,” it has come to mean more broadly, “lack of variation.” The monotonous speaker not only drones along in the same volume and pitch of tone…
Assume Mastery Over Your Audience In public speech, as in electricity, there is a positive and a negative force. Either you or your audience are going to possess the positive factor. If you assume it you can almost invariably make it yours. If you assume the negative you are sure to be negative. MAKE yourself…