Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent?

Advice: slow down when you are talking, don't try to play catch up between your mouth and your thoughts. You will stutter and "umm" "hmmm" less automatically. Also because of this it is likely that your mannerisms will become more coordinated and your voice will be a bit lower, which will add to the "eloquent" image.

Exercise: Pick a topic and talk about it for 5 minutes in front of a recording camera on your computer (on a Mac QuickTime can do this). Then watch how you look and sound, notice the things you don't like, adjust them, and iterate.

I strongly recommend playing the SpeechSkills SoundBites[0] game with someone for a few minutes per day. I just had it on my dining room table and after dinner I'd play it for <5 minutes with my partner. My verbal skills - especially in normal impromptu conversation - got dramatically better after a week or two.

Essentially the key is feedback, ideally instantaneous and non-disruptive. So one person reads a prompt and starts their response. The other person starts the timer and merely raises their hand and/or counts the number of "undesirable" words/sounds that come out.

Focus on one skill at a time, e.g. if you are focusing on cutting out filler words, do not even think about eye contact. If you are focusing on eye contact, do not even think about the content of your words.

[0] https://www.speechskills.com/speechskills-resources/soundbit... - but these are really just a bunch of prompt cards. You can make your own or surely find some prompt set for much less, just make sure they're not intellectually or emotionally challenging. The whole point is just verbal processing!

I'm considered eloquent and poetic and I hardly ever mean to be.

I appear to do this by 'throwing the dart wrong', and storing similar concepts adjacently.

Like I just did in the sentence above. I could have said, "choosing incorrectly from adjacent elements".

But I didn't; I chose the vivid, short, memorable form that came up first when reached for <unintentional variability in speech performance due to inefficient retrieval selection and poor discrimination between adjacent concepts>.

You'll remember the dart and the dartboard, not the phrase between angle-brackets above.

Slight errors can make you memorable, and eloquence is basically memorability

Check out your local Toastmasters club. Public speaking is part of it, but meetings also feature conversations on a topic.

For me, taking improv lessons helped a lot. It forces you to focus less on trying to be funny (or eloquent) yourself, and more on paying attention and reacting to your scene (or conversational) partner. Doing so in real-time helps with recall, which should unlock (useful) vocabulary, connections, and ideas.

To start with, learning to communicate clearly at all is very hard to do. Even if you speak in an uncertain, quiet, awkward tone, if you are communicating something interesting in a vivid way, you can sell people on what you're saying.

Look at some old Elon Musk talks -- he's so awkward and nerdy, but nobody cares because he is successfully communicating his ideas.

Clear communication often involves an active voice with a clear verbs. Nominalized nouns are your enemy unless your intention is to be vague. Pretend that the person you're talking to is a computer that is rendering what you describe -- is there enough information to visualize or imagine it? Fluff sentences hurt too. Concrete specifics help.

Eg, "Joe swung the bat and hit the baseball, with a CRACK; and away it flew deep into the field" is better than the more corporate, "a baseball situation was observed after the object was acted upon by an implement, and the synergy involved was said to be breathtaking."

Also: just being super clear on what you are trying to say helps a ton. Being super clear, logically, why your idea is a good one is also necessary. The logic should be correct, and not just sound nice.

Come as you are. Emulating some Ted talk is unnecessary when you can tap into your own personality, add your own idiosyncratic twist on things. Public speaking gets better over time, the more you do it. You learn to drop your ego and forget the audience and are just there to spread knowledge, which is what all talks and presentations really should be about: sharing information and knowledge.

It helps if you add humor, as the occasional meme spliced with your talk will speak magnitudes of volume than a boring (non-humorous) slide.

Shameless plug: eloquence and style is an incredibly deep subject. I have a few articles on my blog just about "rhythm" alone [1] [2], and that's only one small piece of the puzzle.

Despite being just a small piece of the puzzle, people obsess over it. Virginia Woolf, in a letter to a friend, said:

> Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand, here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it

Eloquence in general... you can spend a lifetime on it

[1] https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/p/on-rhythm-in-pulpy-fi...

[2] https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/p/rhythm-in-quentin-tar...

Public speaking and giving better presentations are both good skills to practice to become more articulate in an informal conversational setting. The core principle is the same: think before you speak. Sometimes, you have the benefit of thinking well in advance (in the case of rehearsed speeches or when speaking about a topic that you're familiar with/have previous explained to others). Sometimes, not so much. Even so: many conversations are extremely forgiving of even a very long pause to collect your thoughts, especially if you make a habit of doing so. People are willing to wait for a clear answer/explanation.

There are also apps out there to help with practice. Speeko is one that I'm familiar with and use regularly (protip: you can get access to it through Setapp if you use Apple devices). If you want, it'll even record your meetings and give you real-time feedback on your pacing, filler words, etc. It also has a pretty fair amount of structured learning material that is really worth working through if speaking well is important to you.

(I have no relation with Setapp nor Speeko other than as a happy customer. If you want, you can use my referral link to sign up for Setapp and we'll both get a free month: https://go.setapp.com/invite/qct2ch6z)

You are not trying to become more eloquent. You are trying to communicate more effectively.

1. Be clear. Write down your complicated thoughts, then simplify them until anyone could understand them. (Hopefully you already do this with your code!) 2. Learn from the best sources. Warren Buffett has spoken highly of Dale Carnegie's public speaking course. I would start there.

Ever tried doing improv? Could find a group online

I find reading and my daily speech to be intimately connected. I would invest more time in reading florid writing.

The Elements of Eloquence, 2013, Mark Forsyth

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Eloquence

Practice for the GRE. Don't take it, just do the prep for the verbal section. You'll learn all sorts of words!

For a long time I've subscribed to dictionary.com word of the day..I learn it and try to incorporate it somehow within 24 hours so I recall it..this has vastly improved my lexicon and I found using the bigger words can sometimes fill in the umms and ahhs. I also practice speeches in the mirror or by myself before I do them in front of others!

I once took part on a seminar to improve on presentation skills. We had to present on a topic and we were recorded. You can later watch yourself and see how you sound, how much you hurry through sentences, etc. We repeated the process and within one hour you could see substantial improvements in everyone.