Book description
Splashy slides, confident body language, and a lot of eye contact are fine and well. But if a speech is rambling, illogical, or just plain boring, the impact will be lost. Now everyone can learn to give powerful, on-target speeches that capture an audience's attention and drive home a message. The key is not just in the delivery techniques, but in tapping into the power of language.
Prepared by an award-winning writer, this authoritative speech-writing guide covers every essential element of a great speech, including outlining and organizing, beginning with a bang, making use of action verbs and vivid nouns, and handling questions from the audience. Plus, the book includes excerpts from some of history's most memorable speeches-eloquent words to contemplate and emulate.
Table of contents
- Copyright
- Also by Richard Dowis (with Richard Lederer)
- Foreword
- Opportunity Knocks
- Before You Speak
- Preparing to Write
- Outlining and Organizing
- Beginning Well
- The Best of References
- Watch Your Language
-
Write It Right, Say It Right
- Advise/inform
- Affect/effect
- Aggravate/irritate
- Alternate/alternative
- Amount/number
- Appraise/apprise
- Aren't I?
- Assure/ensure/insure
- Averse/adverse
- Bad/badly
- Between/among
- Compare to/compare with
- Comprise/compose
- Consensus
- Convince/persuade
- Could care less
- Criterion/criteria
- Different from/different than
- Disinterested/uninterested
- Enormity/enormousness
- Feasible/possible/viable
- Few/less
- Flaunt/flout
- Founder/flounder
- Further/farther
- Graduated/graduated from/was graduated
- Hopefully
- Imply/infer
- Important/importantly
- In behalf of/on behalf of
- Liable/likely
- Lie/lay
- Literally/figuratively
- Loathe/loath
- Mobile/movable
- None is/none are
- Prescribe/proscribe
- Sewerage/sewage
- Shall/will
- Tandem/parallel
- That/which
- Those kinds/that kind
- Ultimate/penultimate
- Whom/who
- "The Name American Must Always Exalt Pride"
- ''Secrets'' of the Pros
- Wisdom of the Ages
- Get Personal
- Statistics and Other Lies
- Closing the Speech
- ''I have the honor to present . . .''
- More Than Words Can Say
- The Final Stages
- And So to Speak
- An Editing Checklist for Speech Writers
- Resources for Speakers and Speech Writers
Product information
- Title: The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write It * How to Deliver It
- Author(s):
- Release date: August 1999
- Publisher(s): AMACOM
- ISBN: 0814470548
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