Excellent piece by George Orwell on Politics and the English Language. I found myself seeing many parallels with public speaking. It is well worth a read. Here are the final bullet points:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never us a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
All excellent advice for speech creation. In reading the piece, you can see how Orwell uses different figures of speech to add dimension. I harp on about #4 a lot. Stories come alive when you use the active tense. Try it in your next speech and let me know how it goes.
Posted under Toastmasters
This post was written by john on August 28, 2009
