If you really want to be understood, say things simply. – John Buckley
If your speech or presentation doesn’t sound conversational, check on your use of language. Short words in your speech work best for clear communication.
In his book, The Sir Winston Method: The Five Secrets of Speaking the Language of Leadership, the author asks us to imagine what the fate of World War II might have been if the Prime Minister of Britain did not have an excellent command of the spoken language – and thus command of his audience. Churchill had not uttered his immortal, “I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and tears.” But, instead said, “I have nothing to offer but sanguinary fluids, sudorific secretions, and lachrymal elements.”
Persuasive words
Below are twelve of the most persuasive terms in the English language:
- you
- results
- health
- easy
- money
- guarantee
- save
- discovery
- love
- proven
- new
- safety
Speaking of short words in your speech…ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SPEECHES OF ALL TIME…
The Gettysburg address. It contains no words over five letters long.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
