Friday 24 February 2012

Keep speeches to 5 minutes max

By Simon Jenkins in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/23/adele-ilk-rhetoric
Research apparently shows that most audiences can recall little beyond the first five minutes of any talk. The brain simply shuts up shop, to await that ever-exhilarating phrase "and now finally". Listeners know this, yet they forget it when they become speakers. Probably the most famous speech in history, Lincoln's Gettysburg address, had just 10 sentences and 272 words. It followed a two-hour speech by a man called Everett, which no one remembers.

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