Equipping with “Quipigrams”

“Quipigrams”

A good speaker equips himself with quips; a profound talker loads up on epigrams (these are the wisecracks that “made the Met”). These “quipigrams” breathe life into abstract facts and make them emote a Phi Beta Kappa columnist calls them “facts clothed with emotional appeal.”

To say that a speaker is “gracious” is to say something trite. This worthy virtue deserves a better build-up, even if it takes more words. By saying, “Our speaker is more than a considerate man,” we add glamor to his graciousness and communicate emotion. After thus breathing life into this flat fact we may move it around by using an illustration such as:

Coming home late from a meeting his wife asked, “Didn’t I hear the clock strike three as you came in?” And he told her, “Yes, dear, it was going to strike eleven but I thought it might disturb you so I stopped the clock!”

The bikini brevity of a speaker who has a talent for using only a few well chosen words, may be dramatized by this South Sea Island incident:

A diplomat addressing a group of natives, had the excellent assistance of an interpreter. At one point this linguist remained silent all through a lengthy anecdote, and not until after the punch line did he utter a few brief words in the native tongue-and the audience broke out into loud guffaws. Later the puzzled speaker asked his helper how he’d condensed the long story so effectively, and was told: “Story too long; I say ‘He tell joke. Please laugh!’”

Tags: public speaking

Kindly consider linking to this article by just copying and pasting the code below on your website/blog ( press Ctrl+C to copy the entire code). The text link will look on your website like this: Equipping with “Quipigrams”

<a href="http://www.public-speaking-art.com/equipping-with-quipigrams.html">Equipping with “Quipigrams”</a>