3. How to Use This Book

If you have a presentation or speech to give, you should know the basic rules for every presentation. Other sources on presentations might use different guidelines, but these rules are summarized from 35 years of personal experience and research.

1. Know your audience. You must know who will be listening to you. Why have these people given up their time to come hear you? What do they expect to get out of hearing your presentation? What do they expect to take away from your presentation?

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Research your topic so that you feel comfortable talking about it. Delve into the background, history, trends, and current issues. Have a working knowledge of the critical facts and details to support the points you intend to make.

3. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. You do not want to recite or read your presentation; you want to appear to have given it several times before. If you have delivered it in dress rehearsal format at least six times, you will look well rehearsed.

4. In the presentation, use notes; do not read your presentation.

5. If you use slides, do not look back at the slides; maintain eye contact with the audience.

6. Select an appropriate tone, style, pitch, rate, and time.

7. From the following lists, carefully select powerful verbs that add punch to your sentences.

Power verbs for speakers and presenters are arranged alphabetically under major and minor categories of human knowledge.¹

1 Based on The Outline of Knowledge, edited by Mortimer J. Adler.

We call familiarity with someone or something “human knowledge,” and this can include facts, information, descriptions, analysis of data, or skills acquired through experience or education. Furthermore, it can refer to the theoretical (the explicit) or practical (implicit) understanding of a subject. The author has included hundreds of the most useful power verbs as part of the practical implicit piece of human knowledge, to help speakers and presenters pump up their speeches, toasts, briefings, talks, impromptu remarks, and other forms of human communications.

You must put together the rest of your sentences using good grammar, style, syntax, and tense, but the power and sway of your sentences and phrases come from your power verbs.

When searching for attention-grabbing, highly impactful power verbs, think about your topic or subject of interest and then consult this book by first searching for the appropriate broad category of human knowledge (Art, Morals and Ethics, Technology, and so on). Then refine your search by looking in the subcategories for just the right power verbs. The power verbs that will pump up your communications are listed alphabetically under the categories and subcategories.

To find the right power verbs, cross-check the selected power verbs and other main categories and subcategories of human knowledge in the index. Uncommonly used power verbs include an international pronunciation.

Each power verb has synonyms and abbreviated definitions to help you position just the right power verbs for the impact and effect you desire. See the following example.

(1) “Critics, including the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, say the tribe’s plans to build ‘Rancho San Pablo’ would despoil the natural beauty of the area—one of the Bay Area’s last large undeveloped bayside vistas. —Jim Doyle, Pomo Indians Plan Housing Tract on San Pablo Bay Land, San Francisco Chronicle, p. A15, 15 January 1996.

(2) “Aristotle said: ‘Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life.’ It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. —President Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Great Society Speech, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 22 May 1964.

Collocates to: environment, lands, natural beauty, open space, parklands, wetlands, wilderness

In most cases, the power verbs have examples of the specific word in actual use. These examples include the power verb used in sentences, famous speeches, quotations, and newspaper and magazine articles. Some power verbs have a list of words that collocate or tend to be grouped with that power verb.

In addition to these aids, where possible and appropriate, examples of using the power verb in more vivid language phrasing and form are included. These include

• Alliteration: The repetition of the consonant sound of close or adjoining words. An example of alliteration is “Step forward, Tin Man. You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk. ... And you, Scarecrow, have the effrontery to ask for a brain! You billowing bale of bovine fodder!” —Delivered by Frank “Wizard of Oz” Morgan (from the movie The Wizard of Oz).

• Antithesis: The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas frequently in parallel structure. Examples might include, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” —John Kennedy. Another example is, “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” —T. E. Lawrence.

• Metaphor: An implicit comparison between things that are essentially different yet have something in common. It is different from the simile, in that the metaphor does not contain words such as like or as. Examples of metaphors might include “The same sun warms rich and poor,” “Great managers manage by chess, good managers manage by checkers,” “Life is journey; travel it well,” and “Life is a zoo in a jungle.”

• Parallelism: A pair or series of related words, phrases, or sentences. An example of parallelism might be “We defeated communism. We defeated fascism. We defeated them on the field of battle, and we defeated them on the field of ideas.” —Colin Powell.

• Repetition: The same word or set of words repeated at the beginning or end of successive sentences, phrases, or clauses. Repetition usually results in parallelism and builds a strong cadence in the speaker’s delivery. An example of repetition is “We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.” —George W. Bush. Another example is “The ever important murmur, dramatize it, dramatize it!” —Henry James, American expatriate writer (1843–1916).

• Simile: An explicit comparison between things that are essentially different yet have something in common. Similes always includes a word such as like or as. Examples include “busy as a bee,” “hungry as a tiger,” and “light as a feather.” Overuse of similes creates clichés and diminishes the vivid impression you are trying to create.

Following are some examples from the book:

(2) succeed in doing something

(1), (2) “The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.” —Denis Waitley

Alliteration: If you help others accomplish their goals and attain their objectives, you will achieve your dreams.

Parallelism: “Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.” —Joseph Heller

Repetition: If you want to achieve, you have to rise early; if you want achieve, you have to work hard every day; if you want to achieve, you have to accomplish something every day before you go to sleep.

(1) During the Cold War, the major powers determined coexistence was preferable to the alternative, which could have been a nuclear holocaust.

Antithesis: “In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.” —John Kenneth Galbraith

Antithesis: “The present and the past coexist, but the past shouldn’t be in flashback.” —Alain Resnais

Parallelism: “The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction.“ —Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Prime Minister (1889–1964)

Repetition: “I think sometimes when children grow up, their parents grow up. Mine grew up with me. We coexist. I don’t try to change them anymore, and I don’t think they try to change me. We agree to disagree.” —Katy Perry, singer

(2) to set to work on; to take the initiative and go on the offensive

Alliteration: “Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.“ —Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian writer and statesman, Florentine patriot, and author of The Prince (1469–1527)

Antithesis: “Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.” —Sun Tzu, Chinese general and author (b. 500 B.C.)

Metaphor: “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” —President Franklin Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor Address to the nation, Washington, D.C., 8 December 1941

Repetition: “Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.“ —Gen. George S. Patton, American general in World War I and World War II (1885–1945)

Repetition: “Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.” —President Franklin Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor Address to the nation, Washington, D.C., 8 December 1941

Simile: Attack as viciously as a lioness attacking a gazelle in search of a meal for her cubs.

Now go search for the power verbs that will pump up your verbal communications!