People usually find it difficult to understand and remember long strings of facts, examples, or statistics, especially when they are not presented with any elaboration. Consider this excerpt from a speech entitled “My Hometown”:

There are great restaurants in my town. You can get Chinese food, Italian food, Mexican food, and Ethiopian food. There are lots of places to go. You can go to the lake, the amusement park, the movies, or the ballgame. If you like to exercise, try our running trails, swimming pools, and bicycling paths.

If this speaker followed this pattern for five minutes or more, his presentation would quickly become tedious and forgettable.

To avoid this scenario, select a smaller number of supporting materials (most should take between fifteen and thirty seconds to present), and focus on the materials that best develop your main points. The “My Hometown” speech could have been more effective if the speaker had concentrated on the most noteworthy aspects of the town and expanded on them. By focusing on a notable hometown restaurant, for instance, the speaker could use examples, testimony, and analogies to help audience members see themselves dining in that restaurant and tasting the food.