The 5Ws and 1H (or Kipling Method) for planning public speaking or other communication

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some ideas are so old they have gotten different names. For example, there is a Wikipedia article on the Five Ws (really Five Ws and one H) questions shown above which says they can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:

 

“For in acts we must take note of who did it, by what aids or instruments he did it (with), what he did, where he did it, why he did it, how and when he did it.”

 

That also is known as the Kipling Method, based on his poem The Elephant’s Child from the 1902 book of Just So Stories which opens with:

 

“I keep six honest serving men: 

(they taught me all I knew).

Their names are What and Where

and When and How and Why and Who.

I send the over land and sea, I send them east and west;

but after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest.”

 

Those six questions are in an article by Carma Spence at PublicSpeakingSuperPowers on December 1, 2010 titled The 5 Ws and an H of Public Speaking. They also are in a second article at Speak2Impress on June 10, 2019 titled The “5 Ws and 1 H” of Public Speaking. And, they appear in a third article by Danish Khan Yousafzai at LinkedIn Pulse on February 22, 2023 titled Mastering Communication with the 5W1H Rule.

 

Wikipedia has another article on the Five Whys for problem solving, which came from Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Corporation. There is yet another article by Jon Miller at THE MANUFACTURER on November 17, 2009 titled The Kipling Method vs the Ohno Method.