Many speakers become so addicted to certain hackneyed phrases that those used to hearing them speak can see them coming sentences away. One of the hardest ridden of these is, “along those lines.” I have heard speakers overwork that sentence until I never hear it without a shudder and if I used it myself it would be to refer to car lines, and even then I should prefer “those tracks.”
G. W. Woodbey, our colored speaker of “what to do and how to do it” fame, never speaks an hour without asking at least thirty times, “Do you understand?” but the inimitable manner in which he pokes his chin forward as he does so usually convulses his audience and makes a virtue of what would otherwise be a defect. The veteran speaker Barney Berlyn says, every little while, “you understand,” but he is so terribly in earnest, and so forceful in his style, that no one but a cold blooded critic would ever notice it.
Another speaker I know in the west, asks his audience about every ten minutes, “Do you get my point?” This is very irritating, as it is really a constant questioning of the audience’s ability to see what he is driving at. It would be much better to say, “Do I make myself understood?” and put the blame for possible failure where it usually belongs. If an audience fails to “get the point” it is because the speaker failed to put it clearly.
A terribly overworked word is “proposition.” It is a good word, but that is no reason why it should be treated like a pack mule.
Hackneyed words and phrases are due to laziness in construction and a limited vocabulary.
The remedy is to take pains in forming sentences, practice different ways of stating the same thing, increase your stock of words by “looking up” every new one.
The lecturer should always have a good dictionary within reach, especially when reading, if he has to borrow the money to buy it.
CHAPTER XII
COURSE LECTURING—NO CHAIRMAN
The very first essential to successful course lecturing is—no chairman. On three different occasions I have tried to deliver a long course of lectures with a chairman, as a concession to comrades who disagreed with me. One learns by experience, however, and I shall never repeat the experiment.