Masonry Magazine July 1980 Page. 15
mides. Shun sentences with involved subordinate clauses which tend to confuse more than clarify. Use precise words to convey the exact meaning. Keep hard-to-pronounce words out of your draft.
If adherence to the rules of grammar makes your phrasing stilted, don't hesitate to go your own way. Use language that you're comfortable with. Keep your remarks to 20 minutes, unless you're a real spellbinder. Otherwise, you'll start to lose your audience. If you're an average speaker (110-125 words per minute), you'll need 10-12 double-spaced typewritten pages of copy to complete your text. Use a speech typewriter if one is available to you.
Use humor-but use it properly. Humor is perhaps the best weapon there is to soften up an audience and to win people to your cause. A few cautions: Unless you're a good story teller, skip the involved jokes. Instead, use punchy, one-liners tailored to the research you've performed on the audience. Make yourself the butt of jokes whenever possible. Never use cruel or unkind humor against anyone. Skip dialect humor because it's just too hard to bring off. Avoid stories about race and religion.
Unless your speech is designed to entertain, such as the "roast" of a business associate, humor is best used at the beginning. Don't drop a joke or one-liner into the middle of a serious speech.
Include some "hard" news in your text. This provides the media with a peg for a story about your speech. If your company plans to build a new plant in the area, what better place to announce it than before an audience which will benefit from the news?
When considering ways to publicize your speech, don't forget that "second audience"-the one beyond those present in the room where you're speaking. Make sure advance copies of your remarks are made available to the press and copies are sent to opinion molders in the media, to editorial writers on newspapers in the area, to trade papers in your industry and to any other publications which may be interested in either quoting or reproducing them.
Cap your speech with a good conclusion. An effective ending can top off a good speech and even salvage a bad one. Depending upon the tone of your talk, you can end on a high note or casually. Generally, a speech designed to motivate ends most effectively with a call for action for the audience: to support a cause, to back a candidate for public office, to write to legislators. Generally, an informative or entertaining speech ends more informally.
After you've finished your draft, go back over it, reading it aloud several times. Is there a better way to say anything in the text? If you're not comfortable with the speech, rework it. Don't be so enamored with your own words that you're incapable of cutting or revamping entire sections if necessary to improve the balance and flow of the speech.
In sum, the test of your text is not how it appears to the eye but how it sounds to the ear. Although all this effort takes up valuable time, it's worth it. If you've done your job properly, you'll be able to take your own bows when the audience chants, "Author! Author!" at the end.
A 35 YEAR OLD
ESSICK MIXER
IS NO
ACCIDENT!
We Build 'Em That Way
On Purpose!
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ESSICK MANUFACTURING COMPANY Division of A-T-O Inc.
1950 Santa Fe Avenue. Los Angeles, CA 90021
Telephone: (213) 629-3341
MASONRY/JULY, 1980 15