Delivery

Your audience will in some measure determine not only your tone but also the way you appear when giving the speech. Part of the delivery is the speaker’s appearance. The medium is part of the message. The president can appear in jeans when he chats about his reelection plans, but he wears a suit and a tie when he delivers the State of the Union address. Just as we wear one kind of clothing when playing tennis, another when attending classes, and yet another when going for a job interview, an effective speaker dresses appropriately. A lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court wears a dark suit or dress, and if the lawyer is male he wears a necktie. The same lawyer, arguing at a local meeting, speaking as a community resident who objects to a proposal to allow a porno store to open near a school, may well dress informally — maybe in jeans — to show that he is not at all stuffy but still feels that a porno store goes too far.

Your appearance when you speak is not merely a matter of clothing; it includes your facial expressions, your posture, your gestures, your general demeanor. All that we can say here is that you should avoid those bodily motions — swaying, thumping the table, putting on and taking off eyeglasses, craning your neck, smirking — that are so distracting that they cause the audience to concentrate on the distraction rather than on the argument. (“That’s the third time he straightened his necktie. I wonder how many more times he will — oops, that’s the fourth!”) Most of us are unaware of our annoying habits; if you’re lucky, a friend, when urged, will tell you about them. You may lose a friend, but you will gain some good advice.

You probably can’t do much about your voice — it may be high-pitched, or it may be gravelly — but you can make sure you speak loudly enough for the audience members to hear you, slowly enough for them to understand you, and clearly enough for them to understand you.

We have some advice about quotations. First, if possible, use an effective quotation or two, partly because — we’ll be frank here— the quotations probably are more impressively worded than anything you come up with on your own. A quotation may be the chief thing that your audience comes away with: “Hey, yes, I liked that: ‘War is too important to be left to the generals’” or “When it comes down to it, I agree with that Frenchman who said ‘If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by the murderers’” or “You know, I think it was all summed up in that line by Margaret Mead, something like, ‘No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d had only good intentions. He had money as well.’ Yes, that’s pretty convincing. Morality isn’t enough. You need money.” You didn’t invent the words that you quote, but you did bring them to your listeners’ attention, and they will be grateful to you.

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A second bit of advice about quotations: When quoting, do not begin by saying “quote,” and do not end by saying “end quote” (or as we once heard a speaker endlessly say, quotation after quotation, “unquote”), and do not hook the air with your fingers. How do you make it clear that you are quoting and that you have finished quoting? Begin with a clear lead-in (“In Major Barbara George Bernard Shaw touches on this issue, when Barbara says, . . .”), slightly pause, and then slightly change (e.g., elevate) your voice. When you have finished quoting — again, a slight pause and a return to your normal voice — be sure to use words that clearly indicate the quotation is finished, such as “Shaw here says what everyone thinks,” or “Shaw’s comment is witty but short-sighted,” or “Barbara’s point, then, is. . . .”

Our third and last piece of advice concerning quotations is this: If the quotation is only a phrase or a brief sentence, you can memorize it and be confident that you’ll remember it, but if it’s longer than a sentence, write it on a sheet in your notes or on a four-by-six-inch card in print large enough for you to read easily. You have chosen these words because they are effectively put, so you don’t want to misquote them or hesitate in delivering them.