Everybody Needs an Editor is a useful 2024 book by Melissa Harris and Jenn Bane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful book from 2024 by Melissa Harris and Jenn Bane titled Everybody Needs an Editor: The essential guide to clear and effective writing. Google Books  has a preview through page 26 (with some omissions).

 

The Contents are divided into the following SECTIONS and Chapters [my numbers added] and page numbers:

 

SECTION 1. LET’S WRITE IT

Chapter 1: Writing Better Business Communication  3

Chapter 2: Writing Effective Personal Communications  41

Chapter 3: A Few More Tips for Any Kind of Writing  57

Chapter 4: Using Artificial Intelligence Intelligently  73

 

SECTION 2. LET’S TOP IT

Chapter 5: Getting Opened  91

Chapter 6: Getting Noticed  98

 

SECTION 3. LET’S FORMAT IT

Chapter 7: Organization for Emphasis  115

Chapter 8: How to Make Your Communication Look, Feel, and Sound Better  122

 

SECTION 4. LET’S FORMAT IT

Chapter 9: Advice on What to Do – and Not Do – for Effective Communication  141

Chapter 10: Cliches and Other Common Blunders  193

 

On pages 39 and 40 they discuss How to Write (and Give) a Speech:

 

“A graduation speech isn’t the same as a keynote at the International Conference on Aardvark Conservation. But almost any speech will be served by the following tips:

 

Know what you want your speech to do. If you’re not sure, talk it through with a friend. A clear title – say, ‘How to Write (and Give) a Speech’ – will steer you.

 

Say it out loud as you write. Remember that a speech, whether you’re writing it for yourself or someone else, is meant to be spoken. And heard. Vary the length of your sentences. Make most of them short. Not too many numbers.

 

Divide your speech into sections. There’s a reason books are divided into chapters. Two reasons, really. Chapters help the writer beak ideas into manageable portions. They also give the audience a sense of traveling toward a goal. In a speech, you don’t have to enumerate the sections for your listeners. However, they will appreciate a hit about how long they have to sit before they can go to the bathroom: ‘Now, for our final ten minutes, I’ll get into…’

 

To quote or not to quote? A couple of quotable quotes can fortify your own thoughts. But don’t overuse other people’s words. If you do quote, make sure you attribute – correctly.

 

 Humor helps. But don’t measure the success of your speech by how many laughs you get. A touching story is better than a parade of weak jokes.

 

It’s OK to be personal. A speech is rarely the place to bare your whole soul. But even if you’re talking about aardvarks, people appreciate a personal anecdote or two, especially if you can connect your life to theirs.

 

Create rapport with the audience. Look at them. If you’re in a small or medium-sized room, make relaxed eye contact with individuals, just a few seconds per person. Ask them a question or two.  

Slow down by using frequent pauses. The pause builds suspense and lets your words sink in. Comprehension occurs in the pauses.

 

No need to memorize your speech. But rehearse it. Record it. Listen to it. Know it well enough that your eyes aren’t always glued to your script. Consider highlighting key words with a yellow maker so that if you lose your place the important ideas are easily visible.

 

End strong. Repeat a major point or two. Consider a dash of poetry. Or issue a call to action.

 

Before you face the crowd, get calm. Take a few full breaths. Then go give that great speech you’re going to sit down right now and write.”

 

And on pages 109 and 110 they discuss How to Give a Presentation That Won’t Make Audience Members Play Games on Their Phone:

 

“Research tells us that audiences remember the beginning of a presentation, the end, and not much from the middle. So make sure you nail the beginning. Here’s how.

 

Give your presentation a descriptive title with powerful verbs. Make your audience hungry to know more. If you’re stuck, use the ‘how to’ format, share one overarching idea, or go with a listicle:

    How a book about mice transformed my work

    How shutting up made me a stronger leader

    Ten secrets to better small talk

    Five reasons to take that big road trip

 

Make it interactive. When audience members are using their brains, they’re engaged. Find a way to include them as soon as you can. Make ‘em raise their hands, participate in a poll, move around, interview each other, or play a game. (One of our favorite openers: Give everyone a pen and paper, and instruct them to tell a story about themselves using only visuals.)

 

Limit the text. Don’t make listeners read when they should be listening. Only display what is truly essential. Your presentation is merely a tool to aid your voice-over. The first slide sets that up.

 

Make it accessible. Use soft background colors with text in a high-contrast color. Choose fonts that are easily deciphered. Start by searching online for ‘presentation compliance.’ It’s the speaker’s responsibility to make the presentation accessible.

 

Don’t spend forever introducing yourself. If you’ve got a long list of credentials – well, look at you, hotshot – ask someone else to introduce you. Your opening moments don’t need to include your whole background: they only need to answer the question ‘Why am I in this room?’ Hopefully the answer is something like ‘To demonstrate how data visualization can tell powerful stories,’ and not ‘I have no idea.’ “

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

How to write and give an excellent wedding speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can write and then give either a good or excellent speech at a wedding reception. I don’t think it is possible to make a perfect one, but have found three recent articles or posts with that claim.

 

One by Carol Leifer and Rick Mitchell at the Oprah Daily on March 11, 2025 is titled A Foolproof Guide to Writing the Perfect Wedding Speech. I previously discussed their book in a blog post on May 23, 2025 titled A brief useful little book about how to write a funny speech.

 

And a post at the Lin Pernille blog on March 27, 2026 is titled How to Write & Deliver the Perfect Wedding Speech.

 

Another article by Shelby Wax at Vogue on July 20, 2026 is titled How to Write – and Deliver – the Perfect Wedding Speech.

 

There is a very useful series of posts by Maddison Wallace at the paperlust blog. One is titled Wedding Speech Examples: Complete Guide for Every Speaker 2026 and describes The Five-Part Framework as follows:

 

1]  The Hook (first 30 seconds)

2]  Who You Are and Your Relationship (30 – 60 seconds)

3]  The Story (The Heart of the Speech, 90 – 120 seconds)

4]  The Partner and the Relationship (60- 90 seconds)

5]  The Toast (30 – 45 seconds)

 

She has six posts about specific speeches. One on June 17, 2026 is titled Maid of Honor Speeches: 25+ Examples & Templates. A second on June 30, 2026 is titled Best Man Speech: 30 Examples + Templates (How to Write & Deliver in 2026). A third on July 1, 2026 is titled Mother of the Bride Speech: 25 Examples + Templates (How to Write & Deliver in 2026). A fourth on July 7, 2026 is titled Groom Speech Examples: 25+ Templates, Toasts, and Thank-You Lines for 2026. A fifth on October 14, 2026 is titled Father of the Groom Speech: 7 Complete Speeches and a Template. A sixth on October 15, 2026 is titled Bridesmaid Speech Examples: 8 Speeches You Can Say Tonight.

 

 The cartoon of a wedding couple came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

How many speeches should there be at a wedding reception?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Chloe Burcham at Hitched on October 8, 2026 titled Order of Speeches at a Wedding: Who Says What & When? that says the traditional, minimal, sexist answer is:

 

“Father of the Bride (or Parent of the Bride)

  The Groom

  The Best Man”

 

And then she adds:

 

“Brides, maids of honour, mothers, siblings, friends and other loved ones can all give speeches too. If you're adding extra speakers, think less about tradition and more about creating a natural flow between funny and heartfelt speeches – and keeping the overall running time manageable.”

 

A second article by Rachel Cascella at BRIDES on November 4, 2025 titled The Wedding Speech Order You Should Follow at Your Reception expands the list to:

 

“The Father of the Bride or Parents of the Bride

  The Father of the Groom or Parents of the Groom

  The Groom or Couple

  The Best Man

  The Maid of Honor”

 

A third article by Jessica Estrada at the knot on October 9, 2025 titled Here’s the Wedding Speech Order to Follow at Your Reception has an even longer list:

 

“Parents hosting the wedding

  Father of the Bride

  (Mother of the Bride)

Parents of the second spouse

  Father of the Groom

  (Mother of the Groom)

Honor attendents

  The Best Man

  The Maid of Honor

Couple

   Bride

   Groom”

 

Whoever is planning the wedding needs to inform all these people to prepare and rehearse their speeches so they don’t have to wing it.   

 

The just married cartoon was adapted from here at OpenClipArt.

 

Situated: Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best is an interesting book by Angela Duckworth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting 2026 book by Angela Duckworth titled Situated: Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best. Google Books has a preview to page 49. In the Prologue, starting on page 5, she says:

 

“I am a psychologist and professor who researches motivation and achievement, and I began my career studying remarkably successful individuals. After a decade of study, I took a six-month sabbatical and did my very best to tell their stories. My first book, Grit, summed up everything I’d learned about passion and perseverance for long-term goals – a common denominator of world-class performers, no matter their area of specialization.

 

Now another decade has passed, and in that time, I’ve turned my attention from the psychological profiles of high achievers to a different common denominator – the strikingly similar features of their situations. In other words, my curiosity has taken me from what goes on inside the minds of high achievers to everything and everyone around them.

 

What I’ve learned is that situations wield enormous influence – and yet, strangely, we’re largely oblivious to their power. Mind over matter, we say. You can’t control the situation, but you can control how you react to it. It’s true that what we do is influenced by what we think – but it’s equally true that what we think is, in turn, influenced by where we are. Like it or not, our every thought and action is profoundly shaped by our peers and mentors, by our culture, and even by the objects in our personal space.”

 

This book is divided into four parts with 13 chapters and starting pages as follows:

 

Prologue  1

 

PART 1: SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Chapter 1: Beyond Grit  11

Chapter 2: How Do We Change  25

Chapter 3: The Sweet Spot  41

Chapter 4: The Courage to Change  61

Chapter 5: Saving a Marriage from the Outside In  83

 

PART 2: SITUATIONAL AGENCY

Chapter 6: Set Up Your Space  101

Chapter 7: Pick Your Peers  127

Chapter 8: Attract Mentors  153

Chapter 9: Choose Your Culture  185

 

PART 3: SITUATIONAL RESPONSIBILTY

Chapter 10: Situational Parenting  213

Chapter 11: Situational Leadership  231

Chapter 10: Situational Citizenship  249

 

PART 4: CONCLUSION

Chapter 13: From Grit to Great  267

 

Epilogue  283

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Chapter 2 on How Do We Change she discusses the Three Boxes Model, where as shown above, a situation leads to thoughts and then a response.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on page 29 she discusses how changing your situation will change those thoughts and response.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Chapter 3 on The Sweet Spot she has the 2x2 graphic with axes for Challenge and Support where, as is shown above in my colorized version, the best alternative (for growth) has both high value and high support.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in Chapter 4, The Courage to Change, on page 78, she has another 2x2 graphic about your situations with axes for Inside/Outside and Uncontrollable/Controllable, as is shown above in my colorized version.

 

There is a review of this book by Megan O’Gieblyn in an article at the New Yorker on September 14, 2026 titled Is Will Power Overrated?

 

 

A new product may not be better than the old one it replaced

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 18, 2026 I blogged about Attending the 2026 District 15 Conference of Toastmasters International. When I plugged the Garmin Drive 52 GPS into the car adapter for my return trip, I found it apparently was dead. The car adapter really had died, but that also damaged the GPS battery which would no longer hold a charge.

 

A few weeks ago I ordered a newer model from Amazon, a Garmin Drive 53 also with a five-inch screen (as shown above). I was going to start out by downloading the latest GPS software and latest map.

 

That Drive 53 arrived stuck in Demonstration Mode. On the screen they cryptically just said to drive to exit. Exactly how to get it out was not mentioned in the instruction manual. I went to the Garmin web site and found a support page titled How to get an Automotive Device out of Demo Mode which told me:

 

“If your device is in demo mode, you may disable this mode by simply driving around with the device, traveling at least 10 miles per hour for at least 30 seconds.”

 

I went for a brief drive. Then I downloaded the latest Garmin Express software to my Lenovo Windows laptop. I connected the new GPS to its USB port with the supplied cable, downloaded the latest GPS software version and downloaded the latest map. Those operations took about six hours. Then I registered the GPS on the Garmin web site.

 

The Drive 53 came with a socket mounted on its back meant to mate with a ball mount that I had attached to my car’s dashboard. But when I tried to plug my GPS in, I found they had made the new socket just slightly smaller than that old ball. It would not snap on. So, I had to reuse the socket mount from the back of my old Drive 52.

 

With the Drive 52, on short trips I sometimes had just ran it on the internal battery rather than plugging in the car adapter. That does not work on the Drive 53. It senses the internal battery drain, and immediately reduces the brightness to where the display is not visible in daylight. There is no setting to override the reduced brightness.

 

But I like that the Garmin GPS has free lifetime map updates, which I discussed in a blog post on June 17, 2017 about my earlier TomTom titled How is a car GPS like a razor?

 

 

Transform your writing by mastering use of verbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful 2026 book by Sarah L. Kaufman titled Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to master the art of the verb and transform your writing. Google Books has a preview through page 14. On pages 6 and 7 she explains:

 

“The best verbs define intention and action, even subtle thinking action, with elegant simplicity. Let’s take a quick look at various kinds of verbs now, because understanding the difference among verbs will help you choose what’s best for what you mean to say. Making deliberate verb choices can sharpen your work. 

 

Think of three piles. The first contains ‘stative verbs,’ which are about a state of being rather than a dynamic action. They include to be and many other verbs – appear, believe, know, love, prefer, understand, and more – that describe a static situation such as existence, emotion, thought, or a condition.

 

The other piles comprise two different kinds of action verbs, which we’ll call ‘basic verbs’ and ‘verbs of manner.’ A basic verb is neutral, ordinary: The dog walks. Verbs of manner are the drama queens, descriptive and specific: The dog wiggles / waddles/ wanders. These verbs tell us the way in which an action happens, its speed, force, and feeling – its manner.

 

Verb-wise, if you write in English, guess what? It’s your birthday every day – with shopping sprees at FAO Schwarz – because English overflows with verbs of manner. It’s a special feature of the language. A secret superpower, in fact. Linguist Dan I. Slobin at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied the verbs of manner around the world, and he notes that, for example, French and Spanish each have a single verb for a jumping motion (bondir in French, saltar in Spanish). But English? It boasts at least half a dozen: jump as well as hop, leap, spring, bound, and bounce. You can probably think of more.

 

Slobin estimates that French, Spanish, Turkish, and Hebrew have just a few dozrn verbs of manner. English, however, has several hundred. (So do German, Dutch, Russian, and Hungarian.) Every language has unique features and advantages, and certainly English has its hitches (all those irregular verbs!). But with a great many verbs of manner at their fingertips, writers can express a specific action and energy with a single ford. For example, ‘The road zigzags up the mountain.’ Lively, efficient. You’d have to use a few more words in other languages: in Spanish, for instance: La carretera sube en zigz-zag por la montaña. (‘The road climbs in zigzags up the mountain.’)

 

Take advantage of this deep verb vocabulary to find the exact verb that is accurate and truthful for your purposes…”

 

And on page 89 she says to avoid ‘fancy’ verbs:

 

“STYLE TIP: Write to Shed Light in a Fresh, Direct Way

 

Do that by avoiding fancy verbs, unless you’re spoofing some pompous character or you plan a witty, ironic twist. Fancy verbs are easy to spot: they often stretch to several syllables. Replace them with clear, simple verbs. Examples of fancy verbs:

 

Ameliorate. Improve it with improve.

 

Conceptualize. This is a word turducken – a verb (conceive) stuffed in a noun (concept) further wedged into a bloated, boring verb. I railed against conceptualization in Chapter 2. Where will it all end – conceptualizationize? Better: imagine, picture, or see.

 

Elucidate. Explain says it all in half the syllables.

 

Emblazon. Blazon, without the em-, is wonderful on its own.

 

Entitle. As with blazon, adding an extra syllable – en – is unnecessary. Title suffices for the verb meaning to provide a title for, such as a book or movie. Use entitle to mean to give a legal right or claim to receive or do something.  

 

Importune. Beg or implore – yes. Importune if you find yourself dining with Lord Byron and he’s pushing his preference for vinegar and water upon you.

 

Opine. No one does this. People say, or, if they must, they state, argue, insist…

 

Utilize. Three syllables and all their attendant oxygen and time, instead of the simple, direct use – why on earth?”

 

But some women get a free pass.If your name is Amelia, you can use ameliorate. If your name is Cate (or Kate) you can use communicate. If your name is Lucie you can use elucidate. And if your name is Sue you can certainly use litigate.

 

The word cloud used  a selection of verbs ending in -ate from here at wordmom.

 

 

Two articles about how to be a memorable panelist at a conference

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Joel Schwartzberg in the November 2026 issue of the Toastmaster magazine on pages 25 to 27 titled How to Be a Memorable Conference Panelist. His thirteen paragraph headings are:

 

Prepare Points, Not Just Answers

Do Your Homework

Own Your Introduction

Lead With Your Answer

Tell Strategic Stories

Identify Pain Points

Interact Purposefully

Handle Confrontation Constructively

Always Be Polite

Stay Engaged the Whole Time

Leave Your Sales Hat at Home

Know When to Stop Talking

Be Remembered

 

And there is another, more detailed, six-page pdf article (with 22 references) by Maya S. Iyer et al. at Medical Education Online on February 16, 2024 titled “How to article:” guidelines for serving on an expert panel. Its abstract says:

 

“Academics in medicine are frequently asked to serve on panels to discuss their clinical, research, education, administrative or personal expertise. While panel discussions are often the highlight of a conference or event, in the medical literature, there is very little published on how an individual can effectively prepare and present as an expert panelist.

 

This paper offers guidelines that will enable academics to prepare, deliver, and engage in active dialogue during a panel discussion. Specific tactics include how to accept invitations to serve on a panel, conducting pre-panel conference meetings and background research, preparing concise opening statements and new insights, connecting with the audience, answering questions in a collaborative spirit, and debriefing after the panel.

 

These guidelines will be valuable to any individual invited to serve on a panel discussion and will promote future panelists in engaging in constructive and fulfilling dialogue, with the ultimate goal of leaving the audience with a greater understanding of the topic of discourse.”

 

The image of a panelist was cropped from one at Wikimedia Commons.