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The sum of the parts determines the success of the whole speech.

As the story about Graciela’s speech on Title IX illustrated at the beginning of this chapter, the right supporting materials can help you build listeners’ interest in your presentation, enhance audience understanding of your topic, strengthen the likelihood that audience members will remember your speech, convince your audience that your claims have merit, and breathe life into your speech by touching on audience emotions. To choose the best supporting materials, you can start by understanding the many forms they take—such as examples, definitions, testimony, statistics, narratives, and analogies. You can then apply important guidelines, such as choosing the most credible proof, using a variety of supporting materials, appealing to different learning styles, avoiding long lists of information, considering your audience’s knowledge and interests, and ensuring that your supporting materials don’t consume too much of the time available for your presentation.