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Is It Specific? - Part 1

Any of the skills listed in the paragraph above could be listed under the head of "broadening their horizons," but when you mention them by name the audience understands. If you listen to as many speeches as I do, you will be conscious of the great amount of vague generalities that an otherwise sensible citizen gives out when he stands up to talk. As much as I watch myself, I find my­self needing a second sentence to explain a preceding one that was a little vague. So let's check to see if we can make this talk more specific, more precise.

There are a number of ways that you can fail to be specific. Let's discuss a few of them:

There is the method of expressing your ideas. You say some words. In themselves the words are all right, but they don't ex­press the ideas concretely.

There are the times when we weaken the statement by trying to include too much. We don't say what we mean specifically because we feel that a small percentage of the listeners might be left out.

Then we tack on additions. We say, "etc." Perhaps that addition is not needed. We may have covered all the ideas in what we said before the "etc."

The names of places is another point on which we are seldom definite. We say, "A large eastern city. . . ."

Next come dates and times. Somehow we have built up a fund of ways of telling the time of day or of naming the year without using numbers.

Our references are also not too specific. We say, "Somebody made a survey. . . ." We know that we should be precise in such things, but it is surprising how often we are not; deliberately, too, it seems.

Then there are words—a large group of them—that are not so specific as we seem to think they are.

Our instructions to audiences are not definite enough. We come to the end of the speech. We are assigning the task we want the group to do. And we don't state it specifically.

Related terms include informative speech writing and funeral speeches.