THE FUNDAMENTALS OF STYLE

STYLIN'

In some cases, it's completely acceptable to express yourself in whatever style you like. Speak in Pig Latin, if that's your thing. Interpretive dance routines are always a hit at parties.

But if you actually want your audience to listen to you and understand what you're saying, it's a good idea to follow some basic style guidelines.

Most of these are common sense, really. Think about it from your audience's perspective. They're just sitting there, listening to you. They can't reread a sentence or rewind if they didn't understand something. And, let's be honest, they're probably not listening with 100% perfect attention. People get distracted by daydreams, beeping cell phones, rumbling stomachs, and the fidgety dude next to them that won't stop tapping his toe.

How do you reach people in this kind of situation?

One word: style.

We're going to start with a quick rundown of public speaking style guidelines. After that, we'll put them all together in an example.

Keep it Simple

This is the most important guideline we can give you: keep it simple. When you speak simply, your ideas are easier to follow. Easy-peasy, lemon breezy.

But what does it mean to speak simply? Obviously, we're not suggesting you talk to your audience the way you'd talk to a one-year-old. Here's what we do suggest:

• Keep your sentences short.

This means a couple of things:

• Remove unnecessary words. Taking out filler words strengthens your sentences and makes you sound more decisive.

• Avoid cramming your sentences with multiple phrases. It's a lot harder to follow long, winding sentences when you're hearing them as opposed to reading them.

• Use "I" or "we."

Using the subject "I" or "we" makes your speech sound more immediate and creates a stronger connection between the speaker and the audience. It also helps keep your sentences short and simple. ("We decided" is a lot snappier than "The committee members have decided" or, even worse, "It has been decided by us, the members of the committee…") (Source)

• Use common words.

Don't use big, obscure words if it isn't absolutely necessary. Big words don't actually impress people. The second you say a word like "perspicacious," half your audience is going to wonder what in the world it means, while the other half is going to roll its collective eyes and wonder why you didn't just say "observant."

Either way, you've lost most of your audience.

Repeat Yourself (and Repeat Yourself, and Repeat Yourself)

One of the main goals of public speaking is that your audience walks away with zero question as to what your main idea was. One way to do that is to make sure you've got a short, clear, and easy-to-understand main idea. (We know, we harped on this in the last unit—but hey, it's worth repeating, right? We're just practicing what we preach).

Another way to really drill your main idea into people's heads (metaphorically, in case there was any question of that) is to repeat your main idea at least three times throughout your speech. There's a saying that goes, "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them." (Source)

Hey, you spent all that time crafting a short, easy-to-understand, clear and definite main idea—why not get as much use out of it as you can?

Be Precise

While you're avoiding unnecessarily complicated words, you'll also want to avoid words and phrases that sound vague. Precise and specific is preferable. Saying an event had a "good turnout" is vague, but saying an event "was at ninety-five percent capacity, with a hundred and fifty attendees" is precise, specific, and a lot more meaningful.

Be Informal

When we say "be informal," we don't mean dress in sweatpants and show up to your own speech five minutes late. Anyone who speaks in public should strive to appear and behave more formally than in everyday life—but when it comes to language, public speakers should strive for an appropriate level of informality.

Why? Because speaking informally makes you sound like person instead of a robot in disguise. Some useful conventions of informal speaking include using contractions and occasional sentence fragments. Like this one.

Sometimes informal speaking can mean using appropriate slang expressions. But please, please, please only use slang that you'd use in daily life. Anything else will make you sound fake, awkward, and, if you happen to use a slang phrase in the wrong way, hopelessly out-of-touch.

Are we groovy on this one, cool cats? Sweet. Keep it real.

Avoid Saying Dumb Stuff

Every language in the world—including (and possibly especially) English—is chock full of dumb stuff.

Obviously, a public speaker should avoid saying any of that dumb stuff. If you want to avoid it, then you better be familiar with what qualifies as dumb in a speech. Things like:

• Sexist, racist, or otherwise bigoted language.

• Unnecessary jargon.

• Tired clichés.

• Outdated language.

• Profanity.

• Over-the-top exaggeration.

• Uncertain language ("I sort of think that maybe…").

• Inappropriate or incorrect slang that will make your audience cringe, laugh, or throw things at you.

Besides profanity, which even ten-year-olds can spot a mile away, some of these language pitfalls can be hard to detect in your own writing. So how can you be sure you're not saying any of the dumb stuff listed above? Our best advice is this: get someone you trust to be honest and non-judgmental to listen to you before you speak in front of your real audience.

Now that we've introduced these style guidelines, let's see how a speaker might actually put them to work.

THE SCENARIO

Throughout this unit, we're going to craft a short speech that, while 100% fake, will serve as a useful example and way to work through some of the style guidelines and strategies we'll be throwing at you.

Before we look at any style concerns, though, we'll take a moment to lay out our example scenario and all the stuff that comes before style—a.k.a. the invention and arrangement steps.

The Scenario

Sally lives in a small town called Summerfield. Recently, her town's council has been looking for ways to make Main Street more attractive to shoppers from Summerfield and the nearby area. (Ever since a big box store opened up one town over, fewer people have been going to Main Street to shop.)

One idea that's gained support is installing a system of speakers along Main Street to play music. A nearby town called Winterton did it, which gave someone in Summerfield the idea.

Sally despises this idea. She's managed to get five minutes at the next town council meeting to convince everyone not to do it.

(Yes, this scenario is about a speaker who's speaking against speakers. And yes, we did that on purpose.)

Sally's been very diligent about planning and preparing, and she's ready to craft her speech. Here's what she's assembled so far:

Type of speech: Sally will give a persuasive speech that hinges on a question of values—in particular, values of aesthetics and desirability (not so much morals).

Because of this, Sally knows she needs to lay out a set of standards, or evaluation criteria. She plans to include the following standards that she thinks should be considered:

• Aesthetics

• Cost of maintenance

• Effect on residents

• Effect on businesses

Audience analysis: Sally has lived in Summerfield for ten years, so she's pretty familiar with the demographics of the town. She's also attended several town council meetings in the past, so she knows the usual audience is a mix of men and women, most of whom are over the age of twenty-five. She anticipates that the audience will be mostly neutral on the subject and to her point of view, so she wants to do everything she can to foster their interest and see things her way.

Main idea: Sally knows that some people are going to point out that local business in Winterton has picked up recently and try to attribute that to the "conducive atmosphere" that the speaker/music system has created.

But Sally knows that the effects haven't all been positive, so she's going to focus her speech on the negatives to make sure they aren't just ignored. She's come up with the following short, easy-to-understand, and definite main idea:

Installing speakers on Main Street is a bad idea that will cause more problems than it will solve.

Claims, reasons, and evidence: Sally really did her research on this one. She skimmed through every issue of the Winterton Gazette published in the past year. She's talked to several Winterton residents to get their opinions, and she even did a little digging at the Winterton police department.

Sally's come up with three key claims (backed up by reasons and evidence) that she thinks will best support her anti-speaker stance:

• Claim #1: They're tacky.

  • Support: This claim has the weakest support. Sally visited Winterton and personally thought the music made its Main Street seem tacky. She talked to fifteen people at Winteron's coffee shop, and nine of them agreed. (Of course, Sally's good friend owns the coffee shop, and Sally knows that its clientele tends to be on the same side of issues as she does. But still…)

• Claim #2: They're expensive to maintain.

  • Support: Sally found an article in the Winterton Gazette that reported several speakers had been damaged and cost $5,000 to replace. The Gazette isn't exactly known for its thorough reporting, and failed to say what caused the damage. After digging into a few records at the Winterton police department, Sally discovered that local teenagers climbed up onto the speakers and hit them with baseball bats. (They said they were fed up with hearing Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" for the fiftieth time that week.)

• Claim #3: They can cause problems among residents.

  • Support: Sally also clipped twenty letters to the editor published in the Winterton Gazette over the past year that complained about some aspect of the speaker system. Some claimed the music was too loud, while others claimed it was too soft. Some demanded more Top 40 hits, while others insisted only instrumental music should be played.

  • Sally also recorded an eyewitness report: her friend, who owns the coffee shop, watched two residents yelling at each other for a solid fifteen minutes right in front of her shop's front door. The argument seemed to be about whether Tim McGraw was great or a talentless hack, and was prompted by the McGraw song "Truck Yeah" playing over the speakers.

Outline: Sally plans to organize her speech in a simple cause-and-effect structure, focusing on the negative effects that the speakers have caused since they went up in Winterton.

Style Session

Sally has written a draft of her speech, beginning with the body paragraphs that focus on her claims and evidence. (She knows she'll need a killer intro and conclusion, but she's going to wait and write those last—good call, Sally.)

Sally is not thrilled with her first draft. She knows it's a bit garbled and wordy, and she needs to do some serious revising. Go ahead and read it, paying close attention to the bolded sections. At the risk of offending poor Sally, we've pointed out exactly what's wrong with those sections.

First Draft

[Intro to come]

At the end of the day, [cliché; imprecise language] installing speakers on Main Street is a bad idea that will cause more problems than it will solve. This speech will endeavor to enumerate at least a few of the reasons why, based on my status as a concerned, contributing member of this community, it's such a bad idea. [That sentence is way too long, complex, and doesn't use a strong "I" subject.]You will [a contraction would sound less formal] hear, from those in favor of installing these speakers, that doing the same thing has boosted business in Winterton. They want to keep up with the Joneses. [Tired cliché.] But it should not be ignored that there are other factors to consider in the matter, and that these factors should be given equal weight in determining whether or not to move forward with this proposal. [Another long, complicated sentence with too many words.]It seems to me that perhaps [uncertain language] the aesthetic effect should be a significant consideration. [Big, fancy words could be replaced with common ones.] I do not believe that I am [more uncertain language] the only one who thinks the music makes Winterton's Main Street feel vulgar and unpalatable. [Unnecessarily fancy and redundant word pair.]I spoke to a lot of people [imprecise and vague] in Winterton, and practically everyone [over-exaggeration, and also imprecise and vague] felt the same.

Next, these speakers can have exorbitant and unanticipated [unnecessarily big words] maintenance costs. Winterton has already spent a lot of money [imprecise and vague] to repair speakers that were damaged. In that case, the damage was due to teenaged residents who didn't like the song that played over the speakers and deliberately inflicted the damage. [Long sentence full of unnecessary words.] Many other factors could contribute to damage, such as natural disasters, wildlife infiltration, and a host of other potential unknown factors. [A bunch of big, fancy words that aren't precise.]A third factor to consider is the effect that broadcasting music has had on the residents of Winterton. I found twenty letters to the editor in the Winterton Gazette that suggest many residents are unhappy with the speakers for one reason or another. [Imprecise and vague.] Disagreements about the music have even led to unpleasant public confrontations occurring [fancy words that could be swapped with simpler one] in front of local businesses. It can be assumed that that [unnecessary words] is not good for business.

[Conclusion to come]

Revised Draft

Now read Sally's revised draft and decide if you think it's an improvement:

[Intro to come]

Installing speakers on Main Street is a bad idea that will cause more problems than it will solve. I'd like to share three problems that are most significant to me as a tax-paying resident of Summerfield.

You'll hear, from those in favor of installing these speakers, that doing the same thing has boosted business in Winterton. That's certainly an issue we should consider here in Summerfield. But we should give equal weight to other issues, too.

First, I think broadcasting music along Winterton's Main Street feels tacky. I spoke to fifteen Winterton residents, and nine of them—a majority—felt the same.

The speakers have caused another unexpected problem in Winterton: they're expensive to maintain. Winterton has already spent five thousand dollars to repair speakers that were damaged. I read the police report about the incident. Turns out some teenagers didn't like the song that was playing, and took a baseball bat to three of the speakers. But teenagers aren't the only thing that can cause damage. How much more money will Winterton spend to repair speakers damaged by storms or birds or impaired drivers—or who knows what else?

The speakers have also caused unnecessary problems between Winterton residents. I found twenty letters to the editor in the Gazette that suggest residents are unhappy with the speakers because of the volume of the music and the choice of songs. I'm friends with the woman who owns Winterton's coffee shop, and she told me that two residents got into a shouting match about the music in front of her shop one day. That didn't exactly boost business.

[Conclusion to come]

Note that Sally took the basic phrase "cause problems" from her main idea and repeated that a few times throughout to really reinforce the message that these speakers will cause problem after problem.

While the revised version of Sally's speech is better, it's not done yet. Sally will keep revising her language throughout the next few lessons…because Sally knows that revision is what turns a mediocre speech into a great one.