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How to give a good speech
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The art of good public speaking is often to say less, giving each idea time to breathe, and time to be absorbed by the audience.
PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO
Tim Harford
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There are many ways to give a terrible speech. The chief executive who pulls out a sheaf of densely written text and robotically reads it aloud. The management consultant whose every word competes with a jargon-filled tangle of meaningless diagrams and bullet points. The best man who manages to embarrass the bride and outrage her mother with his scurrilous tales.
The strange thing is that we all know this. We’ve all sat in audiences watching speakers commit these familiar crimes against rhetoric. We all know that there are much better ways to give a talk. So why do we keep doing it so badly?
