The demands of a Speech

While I have given many presentations and speeches throughout my education, I have never written one for someone else nor have I had a larger audience than 30 people or more at stake than getting a good grade. Speeches and presentations are very serious styles of communication. Not only is the information and purpose of the speech important for the audience to take away but so is the entire experience overall. People do not know how much time, effort and planning actually goes into a speech. In fact, more attention goes into a speech than other writing styles according to the book.

There are so many variables that go into a successful speech. For instance, knowing your audience is crucial to executing the message of a speech well. If you know the audience, then you will have an easier time of understanding what type of language they will respond to. As a pr practitioner, you cant only pay attention to verbal planning but also nonverbal styles. Overall, in the speech, you should try and focus on about three main points. (Generally, that’s the magic number of what people can remember easily.)

There are a lot of different kinds of speeches and public speaking situations. Things like television interviews are important styles of speech as well. Being able to get feedback from these speeches and evaluating them to see how successful they were is very important for future work.

Grammer, selling and puncnation

My title is just a fun little example of how small mis-spellings can not only confuse readers but completely change the meanings of messages. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are so much more important than people think. To many of us, these things are just annoyances in a class that we have to pass in elementary school. What we do not realize until something bad happens is that if grammar mistakes go unnoticed they completely change the intent of a message.

The main issue with messing up grammar or spelling or even a comma is that your credibility is ruined! I really enjoyed the examples the beginning of this chapter gave. A church bulletin lost a lot of credibility and pride when they published the ad “The Senior Chair invites any member of the congregation who enjoys sinning to join the Choir.” Obviously, this was supposed to be “singing” but because of this spelling mistake the entire message was useless.

There are so many rules in the world or writing, and most of them concern the appropriate use of grammar and punctuation. I have spent a lot of time abroad and people would always tell me how hard learning English was for them. I have observed that one of the main reasons for this is using certain punctuation or correct grammar is all relative to the message youre sending. For example, using the word “that” versus using “which” in a sentence can change the whole meaning of the sentences (even though the words are generally used interchangeably by many people.)

There is also a large array of words that even good writers can confuse with each other, which makes proof reading even more essential. While not all grammar rules are important or worth discussing, grammar is central to good and effective communication. Without a decent understanding of grammar, punctuation and spelling no one will consider you a credible communicator and therefore, will not trust you as a professional.