Do you have any quotable last words for us?

Memorable quotations are useful in speeches. This year there was a book by Joseph Hayden titled Any last words?: Deathbed Quotes and Famous Farewells.

He says that Abraham Lincoln’s last words (before he was shot) were:

“She won’t think anything about it.”

That was in reply to his wife Mary Todd having asked him:

“What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?  

In chronological order (by date of death) ten others were:

Jane Austen (1775 – 1817): “I want nothing but death.”

Zachary Taylor (1784 – 1850) “I regret nothing, but I am sorry to leave my friends.”

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886): “I must go in, for the fog is rising.”

Tom ‘Black Jack’ Ketchum (1863 - 1901): “I’ll be in hell before you start breakfast. Let her rip!”

Douglas Fairbanks (1883 – 1939): “I’ve never felt better.”

Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953): “I knew it! I knew it! Born in a hotel room and, God damn it, died in a hotel room.”

Sam Cooke (1931 - 1964): “Lady, you shot me.”

Groucho Marx (1890 – 1977): “Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!”

Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988): “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”

Del Close (1934 – 1999): "I’m tired of being the funniest person in the room.”

At Mental Floss on July 4, 2013 you can find an article by Stacy Conradt listing The last words of 38 presidents. On October 27, 2011 I blogged about Any last words?

Tylor Ketchum and his band Tylor & the Train Robbers tell the story of his ancestor in the Ballad of Black Jack Ketchum which is a song on their second album, Best of the Worst Kind. There is a striking live solo version too.   

 

An image of Lincoln on his deathbed came from the Library of Congress.

Stilted language identifies a fraudulent email

This week I received a fake phishing email telling me to fix my Apple ID. It was sent from wrong address and misworded as follows:

"Dear Customer:

Your Apple ID has been locked for security reason.

It looks like your account is outdated and requires to updated account ownership information, so we can protect your account and improve our service to maintenance your privacy.

To continue using your account again, we advise you to update the information before 24 hours or your account will be permanently locked.

Go to [Phony Web Address] and update your information.

Sincerely,

Apple Support"

In the second sentence the stilted phrases ‘requires to updated’ and ‘maintenance your privacy’ reveal that it was not written by an Apple employee at their U.S. headquarters as claimed. Instead it came someone with very little knowledge of English who did not even bother to check their grammar.

A painting by Jean Louis Gintrac was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.  

Crystal healing still is questionable

On February 5, 2017 I blogged about Can turquoise and other crystals heal fear of public speaking? and concluded it is likely we are fooling ourselves. Recently there has been more on crystals and healing.

At The Guardian there was an article describing where crystals are mined by Tess McClure on September 17, 2019 titled Dark crystals: the brutal reality beyond a booming wellness craze. At Science-Based Medicine on September 18, 2019 there was a serious article by Steven Novella about Crystal Healing which said:

“….Crystal healing has many of the hallmarks of alternative medicine pseudoscience, and is just another manifestation of many common themes. It is a form of energy medicine. Proponents claim that different types of crystals either contain, amplify, attract, or repel different kinds of energy. Like energy medicine in general, we are not talking about any kind of real energy that can be identified or measured by physicists. This energy is not predicted by the standard model of particle physics, and don’t expect the Large Hadron Collider to find any force carrying particles related to crystal energy. There is no Higgs Boson of energy medicine.
The ‘energy’ referred to in energy medicine is purely metaphorical and mythical. Proponents generally claim that it is ‘spiritual’ energy, which is just a way of saying that the energy has no physical properties that can be detected, and is therefore outside the realm of scientific discovery. But at the same time they claim that this mysterious ‘energy’ can affect living things, which is the inherent contradiction at the core of this belief.
Invoking undetectable ‘energy’, without defining it in any testable way, as an explanation is a common tactic of pseudoscience. Types of energy medicine include straight chiropractic, Reiki, acupuncture, therapeutic touch, healing touch, and is a good fallback position for any other treatment lacking a plausible mechanism….”

Also this year there was an episode of The Simpsons about crystal healing titled Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion. Marge sold crystals at a store called Murmur (whose competitor was a mall kiosk called Plop) before realizing they don’t work. You can read a transcript here and watch video in pieces at YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

My cartoon was Photoshopped from this one of a man and an image of blue lace agate at Wikimedia Commons.   

Stop playing - do serious digging before you come up with an opening statement

On August 27, 2019 at DiBartolomeo Consulting International there was a blog post titled 3 ways to lose your fear of public speaking that admonished:

“The first way to reduce the unknown is to study your topic thoroughly. You must strive to be the smartest man or woman in the room on your particular topic.”

It opened with a misleadingly claim that:

“According to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears, the number one fear of people is public speaking.”

They likely got that statistic from a October 30, 2014 Washington Post article titled America’s top fears: Public speaking, heights and bugs which shows up near the top on Google or Bing searches about surveys of public speaking and fear. But there were five annual Chapman surveys in 2014 through 2018 (and another for 2019 may appear next month). The other four tell a very different story than the 2014 survey. Rankings for fear of public speaking in them all are shown above.  

On October 27, 2014 I blogged about What do the most Americans fear? The Chapman Survey on American Fears and the press release copying reflex. In that post I noted that there were questions on lots of fears, but they were asked in different ways so they could not be compared directly. On October 29, 2014 I blogged about how twelve fears were listed under ‘Phobias’ in a post titled Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts.

Questions in the later surveys were asked consistently. In the 2015 survey public speaking ranked #26 of 88 fears, in the 2016 survey it ranked #33 of 79 fears, in the 2017 survey it ranked #52 of 80 fears, in the 2018 survey it ranked #59 of 94 fears. On January 5, 2019 I blogged about other misuses of the 2018 survey in a post titled How shallow research will destroy your credibility.

An image of a girl with a toy shovel came from the Library of Congress.

UPDATE

The 2019 Chapman Survey finally came out before Memorial Day of 2020 and found fear of public speaking ranked #54 of 88 fears. 

A cartoon tip on how not to wow your audience

On September 27, 2019 Zack Weinersmith published a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon captioned Public Speaking Tip: Start off by wowing your audience with some big numbers. The text balloon says:

“First, I want you to imagine a cube sitting on the surface of the earth. The cube is 14,000 meters on each side. Nearly 3 trillion cubic meters. It’s not relevant to this talk on agricultural pest management, but wow, that’d be a really big cube.”  

How many words should be on a PowerPoint slide: 6, 12, 20, 25, 36, or 49?

In the September 2019 issue of Toastmaster magazine there is an article by Ryan Urie on pages 26 and 27 titled Make Your Slides Sing. In it he makes a silly statement that you should:

“Use as few words as possible, ideally no more than five or six per slide.”

Where on earth did that come from? Well, back on January 29, 2007 Seth Godin had blogged about Really Bad PowerPoint and dogmatically claimed (without any basis):

“No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.”   

But six words is barely enough for an outrageous, brief, tabloid newspaper headline like Dwarf Rapes Nun; Flees in UFO.

Drive-By Billboards – 12 or 20 Words

Two other rules for limiting the number of words on a slide are based on the time required for reading. A May 29, 2018 article by Paul Nowak at Iris titled What is the average reading speed? says the range is from 200 to 250 words per minute. For simplicity I just will pick 240, or 4 words per second.

On page 140 In her 2008 book Slide:ology in a section on Text titled Remember the 3-second rule Nancy Duarte stated that:  

“Presentations are ‘glance media’ – more closely related to billboards than other media….

Ask yourself whether your message can be processed effectively within three seconds. The audience should be able to quickly ascertain the meaning before turning their attention back to the presenter.”

Her 3-second rule corresponds to 12 words, or twice Seth Godin’s 6. But then, on page 144 in another section headed How Many Words Should Be on a Slide? she instead says:

“There really are no official rules on the word count for a slide. Ultimately you need enough words to make you comfortable delivering your message. Put enough there to serve as a mnemonic, but go for a very low word count.”

On October 26, 2011 at Forbes there was an article by Jerry Weissman about venture capitalist Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule. That corresponds to 20 words. On April 6, 2015 I blogged about it in a post titled Billboards and the five-second rule for PowerPoint slides.

NxN (5, 6, 7) Rules of Thumb – for 25, 36, or 49 Words

Communication Guidelines from the Boise State University College of Business and Economics say:

 “Use the 6 x 6 Rule: Keep the number of lines per slide to six or less and the number of words per line to six or less.”

Elsewhere (for the last fifteen years or so) along with the 6 x 6 rule there are similar versions - a 5 x 5 rule and a 7 x 7 rule, where the lines sometimes are stated as a number of bullet points.

None of these rules explicitly state how those words should be arranged – as a powerful headline sentence or phrase. On April 25, 2019 I blogged about how Your presentation and slides need powerful headlines, and on June 4, 2018 I blogged about how A presentation slide, presentation, or blog post needs a great headline rather than just a title. On February 19, 2014 I blogged about how Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

How does a PowerPoint from Toastmasters compare with Ryan Urie’s ideal of 5 or 6 words per slide?

Not well! As an example, let’s look at the Marketing Presentations web page on the Toastmasters International web site. The Open House PowerPoint presentation is titled Find Your Voice. The first (title) slide has nine words. The second slide has 3 bullet points and a total of 48 words. The third slide has 8 bullet points and a total of 46 words. The fourth slide has 5 bullet points and a total of 58 words. The fifth slide has 6 bullet points and a total of 41 words. The sixth slide, titled A Glimpse into Pathways, has 10 bullet points and a total of 111 words.

The pointing Uncle Sam image was adapted from an old poster at the Library of Congress.

September 28, 2019 update – should you only have images (0 words) on PowerPoint Slides? Probably not!

I received a comment on this post from Glenn (whose profile has neither a last name nor a location) that:

“I believe the correct answer for number of words on a non-title PowerPoint slide is zero. Use images only.”

Also, at The Official Toastmaster International Group on LinkedIn Sue Ness commented:

“No words. Just illustrations to support your message.”

On Page 210 of the 2014 book by Carmine Gallo titled Talk Like Ted: the 9 public speaking secrets of the world’s top minds he said:

“Remember Titanic explorer Robert Ballard in Chapter 4? His 2008 TED presentation contained 57 slides. There were no words on any slide! He showed pictures and artists’ renderings of the fascinating undersea worlds he’s discovered, but no text. Why? ‘I’m storytelling, not lecturing,’ Ballard told me.”

Mr. Ballard’s TED talk on The astonishing hidden world of the deep ocean has compelling, unambiguous images. Most of us do not have that quality of graphics, or have rehearsed so much that we can succinctly describe our slides without written words.  

In an article on October 8, 2012 titled Slides without Words at his web site The Mobile Presenter Dirk Haun noted:

“There's also a very practical reason to add a caption as a service for your audience: People may get distracted for a moment (say, by their phone or by something that happens next to them) and miss your introduction of the slide. Adding a caption will let them understand what you are talking about without having to interpret the photo.”

Stephen M. Kosslyn’s 2011 book titled Better PowerPoint (quick fixes based on how your audience thinks) discusses use of text. On page 61 under Point 3. Using Text with Photos and Clipart he says to:

“Include text with photos and clipart to ensure that:

Audience members will interpret the graphics correctly; many graphics are inherently ambiguous, and text can clarify what the graphics mean in the context of your presentation.

Audience members will remember the key concept you are illustrating.”

On Page 62 under Point 5. Presenting Evidence he say to:

“Use photos to present evidence for your case. Presenting both text and a graphic will greatly help your audience members to retain the information (Goldilocks).”

I believe that not having any words is overly restrictive and simply silly.

  

The joy of travel surprises

On September 10, 2019 I blogged about Visiting Crater Lake. Before we left I had researched the drive by looking both in an AAA TourBook for Oregon and an Oregon Road & Recreation Atlas. I looked at the web site for Crater Lake National Park, and for reviews of restaurants along our routes at TripAdvisor.

But some of our best travel experiences are surprises. On our way south from Bend, Oregon we stopped at the Lava Lands Visitor Center at the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. A graphic shown above let us put Crater Lake into a volcanic Cascade Range context along with Mount Hood, which we used to see east of us back when we lived in Portland.

In Klamath Falls we stayed for three nights at the Days Inn. The desk clerk told us that after we had visited Crater Lake we should see the half dozen waterfalls west from the north entrance  along Oregon Route 138 - the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway to Roseberg as is shown above on a map. We took her advice on Thursday, September 5th after visiting the Collier Logging Museum. Views of Clearwater Falls and Whitehorse Falls are shown above. They are not very tall, but are located just off the Byway and sound very soothing.

Toketee Falls was another surprise. The road to its trailhead was flanked by a very leaky 12-foot diameter redwood pipeline for the North Umpqua Hydroelectric Project (shown above). We decided to skip the half-mile forest hike to those falls, which would have included going up 97 steps, and down another 125.

On Friday we drove down to Crescent City, California and then north along the Pacific Coast Highway to Florence, Oregon. In late afternoon we stopped north of Reedsport at the Oregon Dunes Overlook shown above.

Saturday we drove home to Boise. From Florence we went east on Oregon 126 and then took what our Garmin GPS recommended for getting through Eugene and Springfield. East of McKenzie Bridge we also followed the GPS and took the very scenic Old McKenzie Highway (Oregon 242) over to Sisters. The Dee Wright Observatory surrounded by black lava rock at the summit (as shown above) is a striking landmark on this route. Then we took U.S. Route 20 back to Boise.

We had two other surprises in our room at the Days Inn in Klamath Falls. Most motel rooms come with a rarely-used land line telephone and a cheap LED AM-FM clock radio on the nightstand. The Days Inn had neither. But the microwave oven had a clock display, so we didn’t miss the clock on that radio. I haven't used a motel room phone very often.