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.

 

 

Add a hundred or more gestures to your vocabulary with baby sign language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article in the April 2023 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Back to the BASICS that has a section on pages 16 and 17 titled 10 Strategies to Boost Your Gestures and Body Language. Under gestures it says five things:

 

1]  Train yourself to gesture more.

2]  Learn from the pros.

3]  Create a gesture for each main point.

4]  Observe yourself in action.

5]  Have a dress rehearsal.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But it doesn’t say where to get those gestures. One good source is American Sign Language (ASL). The alphabet is shown above, and in a video. There is a comprehensive 600-page book from August 2021 (editor in chief Clayton Valli) titled The Gallaudet Dictionary of American Sign Language with 3000 entries. And there is a third edition of another shorter book from 2014 by Lottie L. Riekehof titled The Joy of Signing: A dictionary of American signs.      

 

Where can you find a more compact set of ASL gestures to learn? At Open Lines on November 14, 2022 there is a blog post titled Sign Language: How to Teach Your Baby to Communicate describing eleven signs. 

 

And there are books about teaching sign language to babies. My local Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library has a 2018 book by Lane Rebelo titled Baby Sign Language Made Easy and subtitled 101 Signs to start communicating with your child now. Another 2021 book by Diane Ryan is titled Baby Sign Language: More than 150 signs baby can use and understand (easy peasy). There is a preview at Google Books that on page 67 discusses signs for eat and drink:

 

“EAT: Your hand moves back and forth – toward and away – from your mouth as if eating.

DRINK: Pretend you’re holding a glass and taking a sip.”

 

There is a Signing Time Dictionary web site with 400 entries (including brief videos) for both eat and drink.  

 

Images for the first and final gesture for drink, and the ASL alphabet are from Wikimedia Commons.

 

That salute by Elon Musk on January 20th

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gestures can have different meanings. They are not universal. Elon Musk learned that starting on January 20, 2025. There is a Wikipedia page titled Elon Musk gesture controversy which explains:

 

“After Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the president of the United States, Musk attended a celebratory rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., where he thanked the attendees for voting for Trump. Musk jumped onto the stage, started throwing his hands in the air, and then began to dance.

 

After he finished dancing, Musk placed his hand to his heart and extended his arm out above his head with his palm facing down, making a straight arm gesture. He then turned around and repeated the gesture to the audience behind him. He then said: ‘My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured’ after he finished the gestures.”

 

An article by Tim Dickinson at the Rolling Stone on January 20, 2025 is titled Right-wing extremists are abuzz over Musk’s straight-arm salute. Another article by Jordan Liles at

Snopes on January 22, 2025 is titled Did Musk Give ‘Nazi Salute’ at Trump’s 2025 Inauguration Rally? Here’s What We Know. Jordan said:

 

“We cannot read Musk’s mind to learn precisely what he intended by it. It’s possible it was a purposeful Nazi salute; it could also have been entirely innocent. The available evidence is too scant to draw a solid conclusion.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Wikipedia page titled Roman salute describes some history of how an arm gesture became a fascist and then a Nazi salute, as performed by German gymnasts at the 1936 Olympic Games (shown above).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But a very similar gesture regarding the U. S. flag (shown above) is described in another Wikipedia page titled Pledge of Allegiance. The section on salute describes how:

 

“In 1892, Francis Bellamy created what was known as the Bellamy salute to accompany his own version of the Pledge of Allegiance. It started with the hand outstretched toward the flag, palm down, and ended with the palm up. Many decades later, during World War II, controversy arose because of the similarity between the Bellamy salute and the Nazi salute, which was adopted in Germany in the 1930s (although, unlike the Bellamy salute, this one did not end with the palm up). As a result, the US Congress stipulated that the hand-over-the-heart gesture would instead be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, thereby replacing the Bellamy salute. Removal of the Bellamy salute occurred on December 22, 1942, when Congress amended the Flag Code language first passed into law on June 22, 1942.”

 

Another gesture has two opposite meaning. A Wikipedia page about the Head shake says it can be used either to indicate rejection (many places) or to indicate approval (Southeastern Europe).

 

A Nazi saluting arm was adapted from an image at Wikimedia Commons. Images of the 1936 Olympics, and a 1942 Bellamy salute both came from the Library of Congress.

 

Master public speaking with the PRESENT method

 

There is a good, brief article by Amanda Connelly at Forbes on November 18, 2024 titled Master Public Speaking With The PRESENT Method. She discusses seven essential steps:

 

P: Prepare Thoroughly

R: Research Your Audience

E: Engage From The Start

S: Simplify Your Visuals

E: Express With Body Language

N: Nurture Your Nerves

T: Tailor Your Conclusion

 

 

Laura Bergells article on Unconventional Ways to Improve Public Speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At LinkedIn Pulse on February 13, 2024 there is an interesting article by Laura Bergells titled Embrace the Weirdness! Unconventional Ways to Improve Public Speaking. One way she mentions and pictures is practicing with books on your head to improve posture. That’s listed in TVtropes and shown at Getty Images. You could instead try a roll of paper, as shown above.

 

She noted that a technique like holding your arms up with palms out would initially feel weird. But that looks open, versus a closed gesture of crossing your arms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another weird way might be to (as shown above) give your speech while sitting down on the floor or stage. Gestures will feel different!

 

Images were adapted from the 1905 book by Lina Beard and Adelia B. Beard titled How to Amuse Yourself and Others (pages 378 and 252) from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Inflated and deflated statistics about nonverbal communication, voice, and words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I ran across some articles that reported a set of percentages (shown above via a fancy 3-d bar chart) which I had not seen before. For example, an article by Corporate Communication Experts titled 9 Public Speaking Statistics We All Should Know claimed (as #4):

 

“The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus found that when people are speaking, approximately 7% of the message comes from the words, 36% of the message comes from your voice, and 57% of the message come from your nonverbal communication.”

 

It was also in another article at B&FT Online on September 12, 2022 titled Insights with Dzigbordi K. Dosoo: Becoming a more effective communicator. And it was in a blog post by Sakshi Shukla at ADP List on June 16, 2022 titled How to overcome the fear of public speaking?, an undated post by Eisha Gul at the Weshare blog titled 41+ Public Speaking Statistics You Should Know (as #8), and another undated post by Kevin Brown at MightyAlly titled The second (overlooked) side of communications: interpersonal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 57% for nonverbal communication is slightly higher than the well-known 55% (and the 36% slightly lower than the 38%) reported by Albert Mehrabian back in the early 1970s - and shown above via a second bar chart. I blogged about it back in July 25, 2009 in a post titled Bullfighting the Mehrabian Myth, and also on February 18, 2019 in another post titled Is your donut chart sending the wrong signals? Philip Yaffe discussed it in an article at Ubiquity ACM on October 2011 titled The 7% Rule – fact, fiction, or misunderstanding. John Cadley also discussed it briefly in another brief article on page 30 in the October 2020 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Watch what you’re saying.

 

Where had that slightly inflated version with 57% rather than 55% for nonverbal communication come from? My search at Google Books revealed that it appeared back in 2010 (almost four decades after Mehrabian) as the last paragraph on page 55 of a book by Paul Deslauriers titled The Grassroute Guide where he said:

 

“Studies have shown that words impact interpersonal communication less than one might guess. One study went so far as to conclude that only 7% of what a person takes away from an interaction is attributed to the words used, while 57% of what is communicated is attributed to body language and 36% to voice tone. Body language and voice tone are expressions of the energy behind the words, which can account for 93% of the communication’s impact.”

 

I suspect that Mr. Deslauriers incorrectly recalled the 55% but then wrote it down without going back to check Mehrabian. He didn’t mention either UCLA or Mehrabian, so those who read his book might not have known where to look to check his numbers.

 

Once those incorrect numbers were out, they got repeated by uncritical writers another decade later, who didn’t bother to check back to the original source.

 

What does this hand gesture mean?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Coffing, who blogs as The Speech Doctor, has a post on August 1, 2020 titled The Best Advice on Gestures in which he claims the one shown above offends nobody in any country around the world. Presumably he thinks what he terms The Palm Gesture only means Stop or That’s Enough. Last week he linked to that post from the Public Speaking Network at LinkedIn.

 

But he is quite mistaken. The image shown above is an illustration used in the Wikipedia article about the Mountza (or Moutza), the most traditional insult among Greeks. The Mountza or Hand Push mimics pushing excrement into the face of a prisoner. It also is discussed in another Wikipedia article on Obscene Gesture, which says in Africa it can mean You might have any of five fathers (you are a bastard). Both those other meanings are discussed in an August 18, 1996 New York Times article from Reuters titled What’s A-O.K. in the U.S.A. is Lewd and Worthless Beyond.

 

And it has still another meaning. On February 19, 2022 I blogged about A dictionary of gestures with over 880 entries. In that post I quoted from another article from CBC Radio that explained it also was an Arab greeting, so people thought they were being waved on rather than being told to Stop. Be careful when using gestures, since they are far from universal.

 

Four persuasive hand gestures - and one to avoid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At The Huffington Post there is an article by Monica Torres on August 12, 2022 titled Try holding your hands like this if you want to be a persuasive speaker. She mentions these five hand gestures:

 

Holding your fingers in a precision grip [aka a ring or OK]

Holding up a number to correspond with what you are saying

Holding your hand over your heart

Moving both hands up and down as if a scale

Holding your hands palms up

 

For the first one, the ring or OK (as shown above), Monica explains:

 

“If you want to try incorporating just one hand gesture into your conversation, Clarke said the ‘precision grip’ or ‘the ring’ is one of the easiest to incorporate. It’s one she and other researchers analyzed in a separate study on common hand gestures that entrepreneurs use in a pitch to investors.

 

In this gesture, you bring your thumb and index or middle finger closer together to touch or almost touch. ‘It’s a way of pinching down to an idea,’ Clarke said, that signal to audience that ‘This is a key part of what I’m saying. This is where we need to be paying attention.’ ”

 

But you probably should NOT use that gesture. Wikipedia has both a List of gestures and a web page about the OK gesture. It cautions that the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) gave the Okay Hand Gesture its very own web page in their Hate on Display - Hate Symbols Database. An article by Bobby Allyn at NPR on September 26, 2019 is titled The ‘OK’ hand gesture is now listed as a symbol of hate.

 

In other countries the OK gesture is considered rude. An article by Meghan Jones in the Reader’s Digest on May 10, 2022 titled 10 Common hand gestures that are rude in other countries notes Brazil is one. Another article by David Anderson et al at Business Insider on January 5, 2019 titled 5 everyday hand gestures that can get you in serious trouble outside the US further explains:

 

“Making a circle with your thumb and your index finger is how to signal ‘OK’ in the US. But make the same gesture in Brazil, and you're giving the equivalent to the middle finger - the gesture has ‘insulting and scatological connotations,’ as the New York Times put it. Richard Nixon once raised some eyebrows in the 1950s when he made the gesture in Brazil as he stepped off a plane.”

 

Rolling up your shirt sleeves makes you look informal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, rolling up the sleeves of your shirt makes you look informal. An article by Simon Hall at the Cambridge Network on July 18, 2022 titled The strange psychology of public speaking mentioned that he didn’t have the energy and enthusiasm he needed unless he did that. Another article by Carola Long at FT (Financial Times) on October 27, 2021 titled What to wear for public speaking quoted Fashion stylist Victoria Hitchcock who said for women:

 

“Rolling up your sleeves will also make you much more approachable”

 

What should you avoid? A post at Gilda Bonanno’s blog on February 3, 2018 titled Public speaking body language mistakes: gestures, movement, posture & facial expressions mentioned:

 

“One of my public speaking coaching clients rolled and unrolled his shirt sleeves while he presented (we solved that problem by having him wear short sleeves).” 

 

An image of Barrack Obama was cropped from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

20 Excellent brief YouTube videos from Patrick Barry on poise, rhythm, optimism, being dynamic, and the unexpected

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my previous post I discussed Does your speech have ‘legs’? Erik Palmer’s PVLEGS is a checklist for evaluating speaking by public school students. In that acronym P stands for poise, so I next looked for videos on that topic. 

 

Patrick Barry teaches at the University of Michigan Law School. He has a public speaking series with twenty YouTube videos on the five topics of Poise, Rhythm, Optimism, Dynamic, and the Unexpected. They are not linked together in a coherent way, but I searched them out and organized them. (He also has a lot of videos about writing, which I will discuss later).  

 

There are a half-dozen about POISE in speaking from the Good with Words workshop series posted on March 30, 2018. Those total to just over 12 minutes:

 

Poise: build in pauses (2:34)

 

Poise: oxygen should be a part of your presentation (2:48)

 

Poise: you don’t win points for saying the most words (1:09)

 

Poise: interpersonal skills (2:10)

 

Poise: the virtue of clarity (1:09)

 

Poise: charisma (2:20)

 

 

There are seven more on RHYTHM:

 

Rhythm: rhetorical repetition (anaphora and epistrophe)(2:14)

 

Rhythm: that’s slavery (1:41)

 

Rhythm: parallel structure (“safe place. Real support.”)(2:44)

 

Rhythm: structure, specifics, stakes (0:41)

 

Rhythm: the rule of three (4:06)

 

Rhythm: constraints can be freeing (1:20)

 

Rhythm: order out of chaos (1:00)

 

 

There are three on OPTIMISM:

 

Optimism: smile more than you think appropriate (1:55)

 

Optimism: the smile of someone who has something to share(0:54)

 

Optimism: informed hope and entrepreneurs of ideas (2:16)

 

 

There are two on being DYNAMIC:

 

Dynamic: your mouth should not be the only thing that moves(3:23)

 

Dynamic: a bad presentation with good technology is still abad presentation (1:01)

 

 

And finally, there are two on the UNEXPECTED:

 

Unexpected: be surprising in a convincing way (2:28)

 

Unexpected: include a little mischief (1:32)

 

Using a leg gesture to point out a direction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gestures commonly use hands or arms rather than feet or legs. But, as shown above in a cartoon from page 11 of Puck magazine back on October 13, 1880 is also is possible to point out a direction using a leg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the usual convention with time going from left to right, it also is possible to use a leg to point forward or back (as shown above).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article on page 5 in the July 9, 1892 issue of Scientific American described a very elaborate system of gestures for showing numbers from 1 to 9999 using both arms and legs. It was called Homogenetic Enumeration. That topic was discussed again in Scientific American by Marty Karmelek on May 31, 2011 in an article titled Homogenetic Enumeration: A Numerical System Guaranteed to Move You.

 

My image was modified from the da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man at Wikimedia Commons.  

  

Good advice on gestures from 125 years ago

 

At the Internet Archive I found an 1897 public speaking book titled The Progressive Speaker. It begins with a discussion of elocution that contains the following advice:

 

“GESTURE

 

Second only to vocal gymnastics comprising articulation, pitch, force and time – which have been discussed in the preceding chapter is gesture.

 

Gesture is the science of interpretating and emphasizing by the various postures and motions of the face, head, shoulders, trunk, arms, hands, fingers, legs and feet the words which are spoken.  

 

Graceful and appropriate gesture renders vocal delivery far more pleasing and effective. Hence its cultivation is of primary importance to those who are ambitious of accomplishment in elocution. Without discussing this subject at length, we will, by a few simple illustrations, endeavor to show the favorable and unfavorable postures of the body, and afterwards proceed to show the different attitudes for expressing various emotions and sentiments. In the first place, let it be remembered that the orator or reader should stand upon his feet, and never lounge or loll in an ungraceful attitude. If a speaker should lie on the stand before him, or hang on to a chair or table, he will not be likely to deliver himself with energy or effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above illustrations show a few of the improper positions often assumed, in contrast with proper or graceful attitudes.

 

The Head, the Eyes, the Arm, and Hand

 

As the head gives the chief grace to the person, so does it principally contribute to the  expression of grace, in delivery. The head should be held in an erect and natural posture; for when hung down, it expresses humility, or diffidence; when thrown back, arrogance; and when inclined to one side, languor or indifference. The movements of the head should be suited to the character of delivery; they should accord with the gesture, and fall in with the actions of the hands and the motions of the body.

 

The head is capable of many appropriate expressions. Besides those nods which signify assent or approbation and rejection, there are motions of the head, known and common to all, which express modesty, doubt, admiration, and indignation. But to use the gesture of the head alone, unaccompanied by any other gesture, is considered faulty. It is also a fault to shake or nod the head frequently, to toss it violently, or to agitate the hair, by rolling it about.

 

The eyes should look the sentiment expressed. Every gesture will be strengthened or weakened by the expression of the eye. This, like other gestures, should be practiced before a mirror. But to give the proper expression and power to the eye, the speaker must feel the sentiments he would put into his look and words.  

 

The arm, the fore-arm, the hand, and fingers form the grand instruments of gesture; or as Cicero calls them, ‘the weapons of the orator.’ Altogether they form a compound instrument, the centre of which is in the shoulder, but each separate joint often becomes a new centre of motion for the portion between it and the extremity. In gesticulating, this complex instrument does not continue long in one direct line, but changes every moment. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most common positions of the hands are illustrated by the accompanying cuts. They may be memorized by the student in a few minutes, and a little practice will make them familiar. Here, again, the mirror will help. Look first at the illustration; then reproduce it in the glass.    

 

The Stroke and Time of Gesture

 

The stroke of gesture is analogous to the emphasis of the voice; and they should both fall exactly on the accented syllable of the emphatic word. In this way the emphatic force of the voice, and the stroke of the gesture, co-operate in presenting the idea in the most lively manner, to the eye as well as to the ear.

 

In all discourse, whether calm or impassioned, the words and gestures should accompany each other. As, in beating time in music, the beat is made on the accented part of the measure, so in speaking, the stroke of the gesture should fall on the accented syllable of the emphatic word. The emotion which calls forth the word, at the same moment, prompts the gesture. Hence, the muscles of gesticulation should move synchronously and harmoniously with those of the voice.

 

When gesture is not marked by the precision of the stroke, in the proper places, it is very offensive. The arms, like those of a person groping in the dark, seem to wander about in quest of some uncertain object; and the action is of the faulty kind which is called sawing the air. Even graceful motions, unmarked by the precision of the stroke of the gesture, as sometimes seen, lose much of their force, and very soon cease to afford pleasure. All the unmeaning motions of public speakers are attended with the same ill effect as a mouthing and canting tone of declamation, which lays no emphasis with just discrimination, but swells and falls with a vain affectation of feeling, and with absolute deficiency both in taste and judgment.

 

WHOLE FIGURE GESTURES AND ATTITUDES

 

The following illustrations will assist the student in assuming the proper attitudes and making the proper gestures for the expression of the feelings and sentiments indicated. It would be well to memorize and practice before a mirror, until confidence, ease and grace are acquired in executing them.”