Find the one unhappy face

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping a positive attitude is helpful. There is a Pearls Before Swine comic by Stephan Pastis on June 29, 2025 with the following dialogue:

 

Stephan: There are a lot of people these days who only see the negative in everything. See if you’re one of them by finding the one unhappy face in this sea of happiness.

 

Rat: First thing I saw.

 

Pig: But they’re all smiling.

 

Goat: Too lazy to draw a real strip today?

 

Stephan: You must be one of the negative ones.

 

My cartoon used eighty happy and sad smileys from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Three excellent articles on pauses – two with singularly misleading titles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On November 16, 2019 I blogged about Please don’t just tell us about ‘the pause’ – because there are several different types and lengths. There is an excellent article by John Zimmer at LinkedIn Pulse on July 1, 2025 titled Pauses in a speech: Why, When, How. He discusses pauses:

 

before you start

to signal that something important is coming

to let the message sink in

when moving to a new topic

for emphasis

to get your audience to reflect

when answering questions

 

There is a second article by Peter Dhu also at LinkedIn Pulse on June 30, 2025 titled The Value of Silence (The Pause) For Effective Speaking by Peter Dhu. He talks about long pauses before (The Pre-Pause) or after (The Post Pause) you say something, and pausing to create suspense or to grab attention.

 

There is a third article by Dave Hablewiz on February 27, 2024 titled The Power of the Pause: The Secret Sauce of Great Public Speaking. He divides pauses into two categories: incidental and intentional. Then he discusses different types of intentional pauses: Pre-emptive, Punchline, Audience, Thoughtful, Emphatic, and Indefinite. Dave has an embedded 25-minute YouTube video (with a transcript to follow from a Toastmasters District Conference) titled The Power of the Pause D2 Conference 2023.

 

Quit pissing around and fix your presentation slides

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

There is a brief but excellent article by Michael Leveridge at the Canadian Urologic Association Journal for April 2025 (Volume 19, Number 4, pages 78 and 79) titled This is a busy slide: Fix your presentations this year. He has the following advice:

 

Cognitive Load

 

“Your presentation imparts a ‘load’ on the audience member. All of the information piles into working memory for processing, and only if connections are made will schemata form and encode into long-term memory.

 

The intrinsic load is the complexity or difficulty of the material. It varies between recipients, as those already expert can process complex concepts more easily than novices. There’s not much you can do in the moment to change the complexity or the audience’s knowledge base, but you can think ahead about each.

 

The extrinsic load is everything about the speech and visuals that is not relevant to understanding the material. It is the mental effort required in deciphering redundant text, linking words and visuals, or parsing dense graphics: a marginally relevant image, the static of hearing words being read as you try to read them, irrelevant lines on that table, the back-and-forth to align the figure legend with the curves. These fall under the research-backed principles like coherence, redundancy, and spatial contiguity, and these names suggest the solutions (Ref. 2).

 

Cut the superfluous text and visuals, even if interesting. Signal to the relevant points on the tables and visuals. Bring like elements together on the slide to decrease the work of linking them. Graphic design principles – alignment, repetition and proximity – are the tools of facilitating understanding by removing clutter. Again, a sweep to declutter and intentionally arrange your slide deck is a quick and powerful thing.”

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Did Benjamin Franklin say you will find the key to success under your alarm clock? No, he did not!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quotes often are attributed to Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, or Ralph Waldo Emerson. An article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on February 17, 2025 titled Quote Origin: You Will Find the Key to Success Under Your Alarm Clock? analyzed whether Benjamin Franklin said that. Franklin lived from 1706 to 1790. But the alarm clock was invented over fifty years after he died - patented over in France in 1847.

 

O’Toole found the earliest reference for that saying appeared more than a century ago in November 1922 at The Nebraska Ironmonger from Lincoln, Nebraska. And that is 132 years after Ben Franklin died! The earliest reference attributed to Franklin is from 1946 by Ezra L. Marler in a compilation titled Golden Nuggets of Thought. In 1952 it appeared in a horoscope column published in several newspapers.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There even is a fake Benjamin Franklin quotation meme generator. An example from it is shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there also is another generator for real quotes with images, one of which is shown above.

 

Images of an alarm clock and key were adapted from those found at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Would you like to write headlines like those in The Wall Street Journal?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a recent article by Tom Corfman at Ragan on April 15, 2025 titled How to write headlines like The Wall Street Journal. His five tips are:

 

“Two-sentence headlines or colon constructions are best when there’s an element of tension to play up.

 

Behind/inside headlines (starting a headline with these come-hither words) are for when we’re actually showing readers something revelatory.

 

Question headlines should ‘pose big, existential questions, ones that everyday people are actually asking.

 

How/Why headlines work best when we’re doing explanatory journalism.

 

Use a quote in a headline when it’s ‘such a standout that the story couldn’t live without it.’ “

 

Five headlines from their February 1, 2025 issue are:

 

Crash victims mourned amid search for answers.

President threatens to widen trade war.

Was that a Van Gogh at the garage sale?

Inflation remains just above Fed target.

Trump’s tariff plans risk jolting economy.

 

Another article by Ann Wylie at Wylie Communications in April 2021 is titled Stop it with the ing-ing headlines (Examples!) She has the following quote:

 

“Barney Kilgore, the legendary editor of The Wall Street Journal, once wrote: ‘If I see ‘upcoming’ slip in[to] the paper again. I’ll be downcoming and someone will be outgoing.’ “

 

On June 15, 2022 I blogged about how Speeches and slides need headlines – not just titles.  And on April 6, 2021 I had another post titled Your speech needs a great headline -not just a title.

 

The cartoon of a man reading a newspaper was adapted from one at OpenClipArt. 

 

 

Move on stage to emphasize an idea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a brief but very useful post by John Zimmer on his Manner of Speaking blog for June 11, 2025 titled Movement on stage emphasizes an idea. He said (as is shown above in my cartoon version):

 

“To emphasize a positive idea (determination, excitement, conviction, etc.), take a step or two forward.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then he also said:

 

"To emphasize a negative idea (struggle, sadness, loss, etc.), take a step or two backward."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also can move sideways and stop (as shown above) when making a series of points. On July 25, 2018 I blogged about a post on his Six Minutes blog about Body movement tips for public speakers from Andrew Dlugan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And back on November 28, 2012 I blogged about what not to do in a post titled Pacing infinitely.

 

 

Jargon Buster is a useful AI tool for speechwriters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I ran across a useful artificial intelligence (AI) tool for speechwriting from word.studio called the Jargon Buster. To use it, first you paste your text into a box. Then you select one of two options:

 

1] List jargon terms and suggest alternatives.

2] Rewrite the entire text and replace jargon with more accessible language.

 

The image of a corn husking machine came from the January 10, 1857 issue of Scientific American magazine at Wikimedia Commons.