The Art of Public Speaking

by Dale Carnegie

one of the most important means of developing power in public speaking is to pause either before or after, or both before and after, an important word or phrase.

Pause Enables the Mind of the Speaker to Gather His Forces Before Delivering the Final Volley

If you would make a thought particularly effective, pause just before its utterance, concentrate your mind-energies, and then give it expression with renewed vigor.

Pause Prepares the Mind of the Auditor to Receive Your Message

Pause Creates Effective Suspense

Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate

The expressiveness of language is literally multiplied by this subtle power to shade the vocal tones, and this voice-shading we call inflection.

It is the power of inflection to change the meaning of words that gave birth to the old saying: "It is not so much what you say, as how you say it."

Without varied inflections speech becomes wooden and monotonous.

One of the chief means of securing emphasis is to employ a long falling inflection on the emphatic words—that is, to let the voice fall to a lower pitch on an interior vowel sound in a word.

A fault in public speakers that is as pernicious as it is common is that they try to think of the succeeding sentence while still uttering the former, and in this way their concentration trails off; in consequence, they start their sentences strongly and end them weakly. In a well-prepared written speech the emphatic word usually comes at one end of the sentence. But an emphatic word needs emphatic expression, and this is precisely what it does not get when concentration flags by leaping too soon to that which is next to be uttered. Concentrate all your mental energies on the present sentence.

Remember that the mind of your audience follows yours very closely, and if you withdraw your attention from what you are saying to what you are going to say, your audience will also withdraw theirs.

while speaking one sentence do not think of the sentence to follow

It may seem like a harsh saying, but the man who cannot concentrate is either weak of will, a nervous wreck, or has never learned what will-power is good for.

force arises from conviction. You must be convinced of the truth, or the importance, or the meaning, of what you are about to say before you can give it forceful delivery. It must lay strong hold upon your convictions before it can grip your audience. Conviction convinces.

Conviction produces emotional tension

Growing out of this conviction-tension comes resolve to make the audience share that conviction-tension. Purpose is the backbone of force; without it speech is flabby—it may glitter, but it is the iridescence of the spineless jellyfish. You must hold fast to your resolve if you would hold fast to your audience.

It matters little how well you have mastered poise, pause, modulation, and tempo, if your speech lacks fire it is dead. Neither a dead engine nor a dead speech will move anybody.

Four factors of force are measurably within your control, and in that far may be acquired: ideas, feeling about the subject, wording, and delivery

PLAIN words are more forceful than words less commonly used—juggle

has more vigor than prestidigitate.

SHORT words are stronger than long words—end has more directn...

SAXON words are usually more forceful than Latinistic words—for force, use wars against ra...

SPECIFIC words are stronger than general words—pressman is more d...

CONNOTATIVE words, those that suggest more than they say, have more power than ordinary words—"She let herself be married"...

EPITHETS, figuratively descriptive words, are more effective than direct names—"Go tell that old fox," has more "punch" than "Go tell that sly fellow." ONOMATOPOETIC words, words that convey the sense by the sound, are more powe...

Cut out modifiers.

Cut out connectives.

Begin with words that demand...

"End with words that deserve distinction," says Prof....

Set strong ideas over against weaker ones, so as to gain stren...

Avoid elaborate sentence structure—short sentences are stron...

Cut out every useless word, so as to give prominence to the re...

Let each sentence be a condensed battering ram, swinging to its final ...

A familiar, homely idiom, if not worn by much use, is more effective than a highly for...

The spirit and the language of force are definite with conviction. No immortal speech in literature contains such expressions as "it seems to me," "I should judge," "in my opinion," "I suppose," "perhaps it is true." The speeches that will live have been delivered by men ablaze with the courage of their convictions, who uttered their words as eternal truth.

Be sure you are right before you speak your speech, then utter your thoughts as though they were a Gibraltar of unimpeachable truth. Deliver them with the iron hand and confidence of a Cromwell. Assert them with the fire of authority. Pronounce them as an ultimatum. If you cannot speak with conviction, be silent.

Get the "big stick" into your delivery—be forceful.

The speeches that will live have been charged with emotional force.

Illustrations without number might be cited to show that in all our actions we are emotional beings. The speaker who would speak efficiently must develop the power to arouse feeling.

There is only one way to get feeling into your speaking—and whatever else you forget, forget not this: You must actually ENTER INTO the character you impersonate, the cause you advocate, the case you argue—enter into it so deeply that it clothes you, enthralls you, possesses you wholly. Then you are, in the true meaning of the word, in sympathy with your subject, for its feeling is your feeling, you "feel with"

it, and therefore your enthusiasm is both genuine and contagious.

It is impossible to lay too much stress on the necessity for the speaker's having a broad and deep tenderness for human nature.

The seal and sign of greatness is a desire to serve others. Self-preservation is the first law of life, but self-abnegation is the first law of greatness—and of art. Selfishness is the fundamental cause of all sin, it is the thing that all great religions, all worthy philosophies, have struck at. Out of a heart of real sympathy and love come the speeches that move humanity.

Speaking broadly, fluency is almost entirely a matter of preparation.

Your fluency will be in direct ratio to two important conditions: your knowledge of what you are going to say, and

your being accustomed to telling what you know to an audience.

Do not expect to speak fluently on a subject that you know little or nothing about.

But preparation must also be of another sort than the gathering, organizing, and shaping of materials—it must include practise, which, like mental preparation, must be both general and special.

While you are working for proper inflection, for instance, inflection will be demanding your first thoughts, and the flow of your speech, for the time being, will be secondary. This warning, however, is strictly for the closet, for your practise at home. Do not carry any thoughts of inflection with you to the platform. There you must think only of your subject. There is an absolute telepathy between the audience and the speaker. If your thought goes to your gesture, their thought will too. If your interest goes to the quality of your voice, they will be regarding that instead of what your voice is uttering.