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Spoken, Not Written, Language - Part 1
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You have to speak this speech, so as we start let's try to lay off written words. We want spoken words—words that you would normally use in speech, words that others would normally use in speech. This may illustrate what I mean. In my speech on "How to Run a Sales Meeting" I do a sequence on this point. I ask the audience how many can tell me what the word "fatuous" means. I ask those who can to raise their hands. When I ask that question the faces of the audience are blank. I ask them to raise their hands. Then I repeat the word and spell it out. This time I do get a ripple of recognition. Next I hold up a card on which the word is spelled out. Now, because they see the word spelled out, more of them know the word I mean. I use the stunt to show the difference between spoken and written words. "Fatuous" means silly. Fatuous is a written word—a word your audience might understand if they saw it written out. Silly is a word your audience will understand when you speak it.
One night after I had finished the speech in which I did this demonstration, a young lady came up to me and said, "It's certainly fatuous to use a silly word like fatuous when you want to say something is silly." While I have taken a word here that is a bit unusual, the same principle applies to many simple words. When writing a speech, don't write, "The expenditures are X dollars annually." Put it, "The expenditures are X dollars every year." The audience will hear the two words better than the one and they will be more likely to understand what you mean. You may slur over the annually, or say it too fast. The same applies to "daily"; write "every day." For "necessarily" write "are necessary" or "are needed." Since the writing of most of us is confined to business letters, probably the best way to illustrate the difference between written and spoken language is to recall the business letters we write. You'd never think of telephoning Joe Whosis and saying, "Joe, I have yours of recent date" or "Yours of the first instant is now in front of me." Perhaps you don't write letters like that. But here is a gem I took from a sales letter that reached me the other day: "This course is the result of the collective effort of outstanding executives. It will undoubtedly react to the financial advantage of those who avail themselves of the opportunity afforded." Now that is letter-writing language, but it won't do for a speech. Just stop now and try to say those words. The man speaking those two sentences to an audience would sound like a stuffed shirt. That's the trouble with most of us when we sit down to write. We are stuffy. We grope for words. We don't open up. Let's take that paragraph from a letter and write it so that it would go over well in a speech. All he says is that some executives wrote the course, and that the man who gets the letter can cash in on the time and money he puts in to take it. Okay, let's write it thus— "This course was written by experts. If you pay the five-dollar enrollment fee and attend the six sessions, you will learn something that will help you earn more money." That is a fast revision that no doubt can be bettered, but as the two sentences are now written they can be spoken more easily and can be quickly understood. If the main writing you do is in the business letters you dictate, this illustration gives you a suggestion as to why you must snap out of your usual writing routine.
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