How to make interesting arguments about a persuasive speech topic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the web site for Parade magazine there is an article by Maryn Liles on March 29, 2021 titled 100 Good persuasive speech topics that’ll help you get an A+ in your public speaking class. She says three things to think about are to make sure that:

1] The speech topic is something you are interested in learning

2] The speech topic is something people (your audience) care about

3] You can make interesting and unique arguments about that topic

 

But she doesn’t say how to make those arguments. How can you find which already have been made by others? On January 17, 2019 I blogged about Two library databases and a web site for exploring both sides of controversial issues. The web site is ProCon which currently is called Brittanica ProCon. Depending on who supplies your state library system with their databases, your public library also may provide Opposing Viewpoints in Context from Gale, or Points of View Reference Center from EBSCO.  

 

Dilbert cartoon on how not to connect with an audience

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In yesterday’s Dilbert cartoon Wally gives his boss truly awful advice about PowerPoint:

 

Pointy-Haired Boss: Is there anything I can do to make my slide deck more persuasive?

 

Wally: You need to make an emotional connection with your audience. Start with a tragic personal story that makes everyone sad and droopy. Then talk about your various medical problems, and don’t spare the details. Then complain about your wife because most people hate their spouses too, so they can relate. And don’t spare the self-deprecating humor because everyone can relate to knowing you are a loser.

 

Pointy-Haired Boss: Wow! Thank you for that advice. I’ll make those changes.

 

Dilbert: How much do you hate him?

 

Wally: It’s more about entertainment.

 

The joy of changing to an iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple weeks ago my first Android smartphone, a 24 Gb Samsung Galaxy Relay (shown above), began misbehaving. First it would not let me receive calls, then it wouldn’t let me make them, and finally I could only receive texts. My phone had become a paperweight! When I called our service provider I found they had it classed as 3G and were no longer supporting it. My wife and then I bought those phones over five years ago. She liked that the Relay had a real keyboard. My wife had our service account so she received an email about support soon being discontinued, but I never did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At that point we ordered a pair of relatively inexpensive Apple replacements - red 128 Gb Apple iPhone SEs (as shown above). I am just starting to read the iPhone for Dummies book and find out how to set up and use everything. My wife already has accidentally swiped downward and lowered her screen brightness to unreadable. Then she had to call support for help. We both have Macs, so the iPhones eventually should let us easily sync information with our desktop computers. The iPhone SE does not have a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack – just a Lightning connector on the bottom, so I had to order an $8 adapter. Our Galaxy Relay phones each had 8Gb built in memory with a 16 Gb micro SDHC memory card added to a slot, but the iPhones with 128 Gb have over five times as much memory.

 

We both needed to move photos from the Android phones to our Macs. At some point we had changed email addresses, and the phones quit being able to just email photos. Trying to upload photos to a Mac was not simple. But going directly to our Lenovo laptop with Windows was. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once I got the photos moved and re-entered my contacts, I decided to open up the Galaxy, which has almost no resale value. The motherboard behind the keyboard is shown above.  

 

Inflated language: Is that treatment efficacious or deleterious?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier this week I read an article from John’s Hopkins Medicine about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine titled A New, One-Shot COVID-19 Vaccine containing the following sentence:

 

“We view all three available COVID-19 vaccines as highly efficacious for preventing serious disease, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.”

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the adjective efficacious as:

 

“having the power to produce a desired effect” and then says it is a synonym for effective.

 

Another inflated adjective is deleterious, defined by Merriam-Webster as:

 

“harmful often in a subtle or unexpected way” but a fancy synonym for bad. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, the noun forms for these words with the -ness suffix are still more inflated.

 

Mark Twain allegedly once said:

 

“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

 

A detailed report about how to do better at working online - like at Zoom meetings

 

There are a lot of articles about how to improve web (Zoom) meetings, webinars, and webcasts. Most just offer personal opinions. But I found one serious report which instead is based on actually surveying a lot of people at nonprofits and foundations, colleges and universities, and government agencies. The survey was done in July and August of 2020. A total of 4,405 people responded, 4,231 from North America.  

 

That 37-page report by Andy Goodman, dated October 2020 and basically an e-book, is titled Unmuted - What works, what doesn’t, and how we can all do better when working together online.*(*As told by the people going it every day). You can download it from the Goodman Center as a .pdf file.

 

Nine takeaways from it are:

 

Engagement and participation (The adventure begins here)

Inclusivity (Our virtual welcome mats need some work)

Leadership and Facilitation (Get training. Get some help. And get better at the basics)

Structure (More online time requires more attention to structure)

Length and Frequency (Shorter and fewer, please)

Preferred Platforms (It’s a Zoom world. We’re just working in it)

Personal Video Feeds (Q: Should I turn my camera on or off? A: Yes!)

Slides (Less text, more action, and always build)

Long-Term Trends (It ain’t over when it’s over)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 14 of the report identifies seven challenges to leading a successful online convening. They were rated on a scale from 1 = not challenging to 5 = extremely challenging. A bar chart shows those for web meetings (which includes Toastmasters club meetings).  

Several other questions from the survey had answers regarding frequency that ranged from 1 to 5 where 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Frequently, and 5 = Always. Results from these questions can be summarized by a Frequency Score calculated via a linear formula and reported on a scale from 1 to 5 as follows:

Frequency Score = [1*(Never %) +  2*(Rarely %) + 3*(Sometimes %) 

  + 4*(Frequently %) + 5*(Always %)]/100     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bar chart shows the Frequency Scores. For most questions those scores were between 3 (Sometimes) and 4 (Frequently). The exception was a 2 (Rarely) for how often leaders or facilitators created greater accessibility.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that a Frequency Score is like a mean or median. It describes the average but not how much variability (how wide a range) is present. As shown above for one question via a table, it is possible to create hypothetical examples with the same Score but different ranges.  

 

On March 8, 2021 I blogged about a 2006 e-book by Andy Goodman in a post titled A 2005 online survey of 16 problems that can affect presentations found the speaker being too nervous ranked last for both harmfulness and frequency.

 

Keep a positive attitude by reading cartoons when you get up in the morning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Motivational Strategies educational pathway at Toastmasters International contains an elective project at Level 3 titled Focus on the Positive. A member in one of my clubs discussed it this week. It is about strategies to improve personal interactions via understanding your attitudes and thoughts. An overview says you should:

 

“Keep a daily record of your moods and attitudes for a minimum of two weeks, noting when you feel positive or negative, your successes and efforts, and three things for which you are grateful. Record and evaluate any changes in your behavior or the behavior of those around you. At a club meeting, share some aspect of your experience.”

 

I try to stay positive by reading about eight cartoons (comic strips) each morning. They give me something both to chuckle about and to think about. All of them have been discussed in my blog posts. In mainly reverse alphabetical order, with examples and blog posts, they are:

 

Xkcd

Randall Munroe’s web comic for December 25, 2020 is subtitled Presents get a lot more impressive if you turn the wrapping paper inside out. If you don’t get why, read the discussion at EXPLAINxkcd. On March 16, 2021 I blogged about What happens when you change perspective by visiting a very small world?

 

Savage Chickens

Doug Savage’s web comic on yellow sticky notes. On August 20, 2020 I blogged about Savage Chickens cartoon on how NOT to give a TED talk.

 

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

 Zach Weinersmiths’s web comic (not safe for work) covers sex, science, religion, and philosophy. On January 21, 2021 I blogged about Old advice revised.

 

Pearls Before Swine

Stephen Pastis’s comic about a neighborhood with animals like Pig, Rat, and Goat. On February 4, 2011 I blogged about a Pearls Before Swine cartoon about a nervous speaker here.

 

Questionable Content

At first glance Jeph Jacques’s web comic seems to be about a bunch of young people in a college town. But the Cast has lots of Artificial Intelligences (AIs) like this one. On December 11, 2011 I blogged about Bridging the Uncanny Valley.

 

Indexed

Jessica Hagy’s web comic on index cards. On December 10, 2013 I blogged about Communicating ideas using Venn diagrams and other simple graphics.

 

F Minus

Tony Carrillo’s single-panel comic. On March 5, 2020 I blogged about how A strong ending is very persuasive.

 

Dilbert

A ubiquitous comic about business from Scott Adams. On March 9, 2021 I blogged about A Dilbert cartoon with a caution about storytelling.

 

The 1943 image came from the Library of Congress.

 

 

A very interesting magazine article on how to conduct hybrid (live plus online) meetings

Pages 22 to 25 of the March-April 2021 issue of Speaker magazine (published by the U.S. National Speakers Association) contain an article by Dave Bricker titled How to Do Hybrid Meetings (and subtitled Combining Stagecraft and Screencraft So Both Audiences Benefit). You also can view (and keyword search) the archive of their recent magazine issues here.

A blog post with a low signal-to-noise ratio

 

If you are unfamiliar with a subject, then you need to do careful research before you post about it (or you will reveal yourself as a darn fool). There is a blog post by Dr. John Livingston at the Gem State Patriot News on March 13, 2021 titled Noise and stuff and Stinky Fish which begins as follows:

 

“Humans can hear sound in the frequency range of 20 – 20,000 Hz vibrations per minute. There are, of course, sounds above and below the levels that we can hear. Radio frequencies are between 20 kHz – 30 GHz — much higher vibrations.”

 

The units at the end of that first sentence are wrong. Our hearing range is 20 to 20,000 cycles per second. A Hertz (Hz) is a cycle per second, which you can find out in a few seconds by looking at Wikipedia. 20,000 cycles per minute is just 333 cycles per second – barely over halfway up a piano keyboard where the 44 th key of 88, E4, is 330 Hz. And the Wikipedia article on radio frequency lists a range from 3 Hz to 3 THz. Those frequencies begin below our hearing range. 3 THz is 30,000 GHz or a thousand times higher than the 30 GHz that Livingston gave as the top of the range.

 

Livingston’s first paragraph continues:

“Like listening to the radio, oftentimes adjacent frequencies can blur the frequencies that are being listened to—this is called noise. The difference between the desired signal and the surrounding noise can be measured as a “noise to signal ratio” When we listen to the mainstream media there is lots of “noise”. In fact, many times most of what we listen to and read is “noise”. Even in the sports media there is more noise than signal—Are the Seahawks going to trade Russell Wilson to the Cowboys—who knows, but until it happens it is just noise. When it happens it becomes real news.”

But noise can be at the very same frequency as the desired signal. And the ratio normally is described via a signal-to-noise ratio (the desired signal divided by the accompanying noise). A Google search for the phrase “signal to noise ratio” gives about 15,100,000 results, while “noise to signal ratio” gives just 77,700 results or a factor of 194 times lower. His getting the numerator and denominator flipped is a dead giveaway he really doesn’t understand communication. He might as well be comparing Covid-19 with cooties.

 

And then Livingston continues with a pro-Trump political rant. On September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers and used a couple of Livingston’s posts as examples for spelling errors. His current post has the abbreviation DJR where he clearly meant DJT (for Donald J. Trump).  

 

What happens when you change perspective by visiting a very small world?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Jonathan Swift’s 1726 book Gulliver’s Travels took us to both Lilliput (where people are twelve times smaller than us) and Brobdingnag (where people are twelve times larger than us). Changing sizes gives us a new and different perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three recent xkcd cartoons by Randall Monroe take the idea of Lilliput much further and, as shown above, imagine rules for visiting 1/1000th (January 27, 2021), 1/10,000th  (January 13, 2021), and 1/100,000th (January 15, 2021) scale worlds.Click on an image to see a larger, clearer view.

 

In a 1/1,000th scale world the 623 foot tall St. Louis Gateway arch becomes a tripping hazard. In a 1/10,000th scale world standing up puts your mouth at too high of an altitude for getting enough oxygen to breathe, so you need to:

 “avoid hypoxia by regularly sitting to bring your lungs below the death zone.”

 

In a 1/100,000th scale world you need to:

“wear sunscreen; the ozone layer only protects you below the knees.”

 

The image was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons of Gulliver visiting Brobdingnag.

 

Donald J. Trump is a smug jerk who never has forsaken privileges

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My jaw dropped in amazement when I read the following claims in an article by Dr. John Livingston on March 7, 2021 at the Gem State Patriot News blog titled Our duty to compete:

“....Unlike so many in the elite liberal classes, he has forsaken the very privileges that were once available to him and his family. Privileges that those elites fear they are losing. The great life lesson that Donald Trump learned as he grew older was that privilege corrupts. Those who are privileged—and I am not talking about ‘white privilege’ but social, economic and political privilege, learn early in life that you always do what money can buy instead of what duty demands. Donald Trump turned his back on privilege and chose duty. What an incredible unselfish act. Almost reminds us of our Founding Fathers who pledged their ‘lives honor and property’ for the cause of liberty. Talk about laying it all on the line and being unselfish.

There is one more thing that Donald Trump has that his political enemies are jealous of—the relationship that he has with his supporters—the majority of voters in our country.”

 

Donald J. Trump never has forsaken privileges available to him. He owns and lives in a country club that is described as follows:

 

“The Mar-a-Lago sits royally amidst 20 valuable acres of manicured lawns, vibrant gardens and sweeping sea-to-lake vistas.”

 

How does The Donald get around? An article by Doug Gollan at Forbes on November 8, 2020 titled President Trump’s helicopter is for sale; Make an offer notes:

 

“President Donald J. Trump has long been a high-profile user of private jets and helicopters. Records show he currently owns a Boeing 757, frequently spotted during the campaign that saw him win the Oval Office, a Cessna Citation X, and three Sikorsky S76-B helicopters. Of the rotorcraft, one is currently for sale.”

 

According to another article at Aerotime Hub on June 4, 2016 titled Top 10 facts about Donald Trump’s Boeing 757 that plane has 24 carat gold bathroom fixtures.

 

About the only thing The Donald has forsaken is admitting that he lost the 2020 presidential election. An article by Matthew Impelli at Newsweek on February 21, 2021 titled Read Donald Trump’s full statement after Supreme Court allows prosecutors to access tax returns quotes him as saying he won:

 

“These are attacks by Democrats willing to do anything to stop the almost 75 million people (the most votes, by far, ever gotten by a sitting president) who voted for me in the election—an election which many people, and experts, feel that I won. I agree!”

 

A closeup image of Trump from 2019 comes from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

A Dilbert cartoon with a caution about storytelling

 

The March 8, 2021 Dilbert cartoon titled Traumatic Story has a caution about when to tell a story during a sales presentation. The dialogue is as follows:

 

Salesman: Before I tell you about our newest product, I’d like to tell you a story about a traumatic experience I had as a child.

Wally: Is your story related to the topic, or is it just an excuse to yammer about something that happened to you?

Salesman: I’m trying to manipulate your emotions to short-circuit your critical thinking.

Wally: Okay. Carry on.

 

A 2005 online survey of 16 problems that can affect presentations found the speaker being too nervous ranked last for both harmfulness and frequency

 

Back in 2006 there was a 100-page ebook by Andy Goodman titled Why Bad Presentations Happen To Good Causes, which you can download from the Goodman Center. I blogged about it on August 10, 2008 in a post titled Free e-book on presentations, with a great story.

 

An appendix in that ebook describes an online survey done beginning on January 5, 2005 which had 2,501 responses. It listed 16 problems that can affect presentations, and asked both how frequent and how harmful that was. Frequency was reported on a scale from 1 = Never to 5 = Always, and harmfulness on a scale from 1 = Not harmful at all to 5 = Extremely harmful. Answers were reported on pages 84 and 85 as tables of percentages for each of those five levels (plus Don’t know). But it is not obvious how to compare those percentages between questions.

 

 On October 30, 2015 I blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking. That post showed how to calculate a Fear Score from their survey results. These results can be summarized by a Harmfulness Score (or a Frequency Score) similarly calculated by a linear formula and reported on a scale from 1 to 5):

 

Harmfulness Score = [1*(Level 1 %) +  2*(Leve1 2 %)

+ 3*(Leve1 3 %) + 4*(Leve1 4 %) + 5*(Leve1 5%)]/100     

 

Based on harmfulness 13 of 16 problems were ranked above 3 (middle of the scale), but based on frequency just 2 of 16 were.  Harmfulness Scores and rankings for the sixteen problems [and Frequency Scores and their rankings] are as follows:

 

01) The speaker was not well prepared: 4.18 [2.43 #13]

02) The speaker did not connect with the audience: 4.04 [2.91 #3]

03) The material was poorly organized: 3.89 [2.72 #7]

04) The objective was not made relevant to the audience’s concerns: 3.86 [2.72 #8]

05) The overall objective of the talk was not clear to the audience: 3.81 [2.56 #11]

06) The presentation ran too long: 3.5 [3.21 #2]

07) Time was not allocated to ask questions or engage the presenter in a discussion: 3.44 [2.87 #4]  

08) The presentation duplicated the content of the slides and/or handouts without adding anything significant: 3.44 [3.40 #1]

09) The amount of material presented was overwhelming: 3.39 [2.81 #6]

10) Technical problems (e.g. poor sound system, malfunctioning projector) disrupted the presentation: 3.37 [2.60 #10]

11) The material was overly complex: 3.34 [2.39 #14]

12) Sufficient time was not allowed for the presenter to cover all the material: 3.22 [2.84 #5]

13) There was not enough information to help the audience make a decision or reach a conclusion: 3.21 [2.49 #12]

14) The presentation was not tailored to the size of the audience: 2.89 [2.38 #15]

15) Translating the material into PowerPoint templates (e.g. bullet lists) made it more difficult to understand, less interesting, or both 2.84 [2.64 #9]

16) The speaker was too nervous: 2.82 [2.18, #16]

 

Note that The speaker was too nervous ranked #16 based on both harmfulness and frequency. So novice speakers (like new Toastmasters) shouldn’t sweat over that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bar charts for both scales are shown above.

 

Are you an interrupter, or just a cooperative overlapper?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are significant cultural differences in how people have a conversation. At Huffpost on  March 4, 2021 there is an article by Kelsey Borresen titled How to know if you’re an Interrupter or a ‘Cooperative Overlapper.’ Those differences are important. In a blog post on March 2, 2021 titled Which speech delivery habits do the most people find annoying? I described how interrupting was the most common annoying habit.

 

But back in 1984 Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor, described how some people don’t intend to interrupt. Rather, they talk along with the speaker to show they are engaged with them. Another article by Richard Nordquist at ThoughtCo. on February 6, 2019 titled Cooperative overlap in conversation also discusses this topic of turn-taking.

 

The tenth paragraph in Ms. Borrenson’s article links to Chapter Eight by Tannen on Turn-Taking and Intercultural Discourse in Communication in the 2012 Handbook of Intercultural Discourse. Her section about Turn-taking in Intercultural Perspective described a conversation between three New Yorkers, two Southern Californians, and a Londoner. New Yorkers expected shorter pause between turns. Tannen explains:     

“In addition to expecting differing length of pauses between turns, the New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers had different assumptions and habits with regard to simultaneous speech, or overlap. The New York-bred speakers frequently talked along when another was speaking as a show of enthusiastic listenership. Because the non-New Yorkers did not use overlap in this way, they frequently mistook these ‘cooperative overlaps’ as attempts to take a turn, that is, to interrupt. Acting on this interpretation, they usually stopped speaking, so the cooperative overlap did turn into an interruption – a result that each regarded as the other’s doing.”

My image was adapted from an illustration at Wikimedia Commons taken from the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice.

 

The Democrat party and the Poohblican party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Names matter. Refusing to use the name of the opposing political party is arrogant. It also is stupid if you call the Democratic Party the Democrat Party. Democratic is an adjective; Democrat is a noun, and if you’re smarter than a fifth-grader then you know those are different parts of speech. But bullies like Joe McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Trump like to refer to ‘the Democrat Party.’ In his 2021 CPAC speech Trump said that:

“The mission of the Democrat party is to promote socialism.”

 

An article by Julie Carr Smyth at the Associated Press on February 27, 2021 is titled What’s in an adjective? ‘Democrat Party’ label on the rise. She says:

“Trump’s lawyers used the construction frequently during his second impeachment trial, following the lead of the former president, who employed it routinely while in office. During a campaign rally last October in Wisconsin, he explained his thinking.

‘You know I always say Democrat. You know why? Because it sounds worse,’ Trump said. ‘Democrat sounds lousy, but you know what? That’s actually their name, the Democrat Party. Right? The Democrat Party. So I always say Democrat.’

In fact, ‘Democratic’ to describe some version of a U.S. political party has been around since Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed the Democratic-Republican Party in the 1790s. Modern Democrats are loosely descended from a split of that party.

The precise origins of Republicans’ truncated phrasing are difficult to pin down, but the Republican National Committee formalized it in a vote ahead of the 1956 presidential election.

Then-spokesman L. Richard Guylay told The New York Times that ‘Democrat Party’ was ‘a natural,’ because it was already in common use among Republicans and better reflected the ‘diverse viewpoints’ within the opposing party — which the GOP suggested weren’t always representative of small-d democratic values.

Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who had just led his notorious campaign against alleged communists, Soviet spies and sympathizers, was the most notable user of the phrase ‘Democrat Party’ ahead of the vote.”

The Republican Party Platform for 1976 says:

“Control of the United States Congress by the Democrat Party for 40 of the past 44 years has resulted in a system dominated by powerful individuals and riddled with corruption.”

And the Republican Party Platform for 1988 says:

“The bosses of the Democrat Party have thrown in the towel and abandoned the American worker and producer.”

 

For too long the Democrats have avoided striking back with an insult of their own. An article by Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune back on November 3, 1996 titled Is it mopery to flick that ‘ic’ from Democratic only suggested revising the GOP acronym (Grand Old Party) to MOP (Mediocre Old Party). In a web article Gene Hargrove came up with RepubParty (Can and should the Democratic Party strike back?)

I think a more suitable insult is to rename the Republicans the Poohblicans after Winnie-the-Pooh  , a well-known Teddy Bear who has said something that would explain dropping the ‘ic’ from Democratic:  

“For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.”

Images of a donkey and a teddy bear both come from Wikimedia Commons.

 

The title of that blog post sounds very familiar

 

I just found a post from April 12, 2019 at the blog for a Toastmasters club in metro London called Beckenham Communicators that is titled Joyful Public Speaking; Our Journey from fear to Joy! There also is an accompanying YouTube video with the exact title of this blog (minus the parentheses). That club was chartered on August 29, 2018 – over a decade after I began writing this blog.

 

The author of that post, Florian Bay, also has a web site titled Speak to Lead. He and I both are members of The Official Toastmasters International Members Group at LinkedIn. I suspect that he read some of my blog posts I mentioned there and borrowed unconsciously. I emailed Beckenham Communicators to ask them. Perhaps they will acknowledge the obvious similarity. (Back on June 21, 2008 I blogged about how He ought to be good, he’s using my act).

  

Which speech delivery habits do the most people find annoying?

 I got curious and looked for data from surveys or polls about what speech delivery habits people find annoying. I found a blog post by Robbie Hyman at Words Matter on May 25, 2011 titled What to avoid when speaking to a group which listed percentages for nine habits from a Gallup poll. But he didn’t say when it was done, and I couldn’t find it on the Gallup web site. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A search in Google Books led me to page 98 in a 1999 book by Lillian J. Glass titled The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Verbal Self-Defense. That reference says the poll was done for her back in 1987 for the book Talk to Win. Results are shown above in a bar chart. The top five are interrupting (88%), cursing (84%), mumbling or talking too softly (80%) and a tie between monotonous boring voice and talking too loudly (73%). Note that Robbie Hyman’s blog post missed both the highest percentage (interrupting) and the lowest (foreign accent).    

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A book preview from Talk to Win shows more detail: there is a table listing percentages for both Annoys a Lot and Annoys a Little rather than just the Total. Those percentages also are included in an article by Martha Sherrill Dailey in the Washington Post on April 29, 1988 titled Hear ye, hear ye. That table is shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results for Annoys a Lot are shown above in a second bar chart. The top three are in the same order as for the Total. Results for Annoys a Little are shown above in a third bar chart. Mumbling (43%) has moved up from third to second, but Interrupting (29%) and cursing (28%) have dropped to almost the bottom of the list.

 

Other articles and blog posts also have reported incorrect results from that Gallup poll. Dirk Moller at Business Connections on October 26, 2010 has an article titled 7 Tips for developing a winning phone voice that claims a recent Gallup poll listed mumbling as the most annoying habit of speech. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An undated article by Linnaea Mallette at K.I.S.S. Speaking Tips titled V is for Vocal Variety said a Gallop Poll reveals that talking too fast annoys 55% of people surveyed. Back on November 2, 2009 I blogged about Gallop Poll: A type of drive-by opinion survey (presumably on horseback).