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Newsletter, April 23, 2009
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In This
Issue
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1. Quotation of the Week
2. Conversation Tip of the
Week
3. Pronounce this Word of the Week
4. I'm Blogging About
...
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1. Quotation of the Week
"A bore is a person who
talks when you want him to
listen."
-Ambrose Bierce
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2. Conversation Tip of the
Week
This tip is about a
RUNAWAY SPEAKING STYLE.
Have
you noticed how some people run their
sentences together
so
it's
hard to tell where one sentence ends and
another begins?
When you're listening,
you feel like you're next to the railroad
tracks,
watching a
speeding freight train. You know the
boxcars have words on
them, but WHOOSH! You only
catch a letter here and there. Maybe a
word. But they don't add
up. They don't make
sense.
This week, make it a
point to pay attention to how fast people
talk. Observe
yourself,
too.
- Do they end their sentences, full stop?
- Do they string sentences together with one "and" after another?
- Or do they runthemaltogether, likethis?
What I did in that last
bullet was annoying, and I did it to make a
point in
a visual way.
We like space in our
conversations. Ending our sentences makes
it easier for
our listeners
to understand us. Experienced speakers know
that when they
make an important point, they need to leave
enough space for it to ...
sink ... in....
Have you noticed that
this conversation tip has a lot of breaks
in it compared
with pages in a book? When I write
something you read on your
computer,
I leave a lot of white space. And
I format the lines so they're
short. It's one
way of making it easier
on you.
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3. Pronounce this Word
of the Week: Kerfuffle
It's ker-FUFF-'L, "a commotion or fuss."
Don't you love the sound
of it? How could you take a kerfuffle
seriously?
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4. I'm Blogging About
...
She’s frumpy. She’s spinsterish. She’s 47 and never been kissed.
And when Susan Boyle
walked on the stage of "Britain’s Got
Talent" show,
Simon Cowell smirked. So did the audience.
When she said she wanted to
sing like Broadway star Elaine Paige, you
could practically hear everybody
thinking, "Fat, frumpy chance,
Sister!"
Click here to read the rest of this story with a brand-new twist.
© 2009 Tracey E.
Bennett
All rights reserved.
I welcome
your comments, questions and anecdotes.
mailto:QueenB@QueenOfConversation.com