The Onion | Public Speaking Tips
- Structure your speech to include a strong opening, a memorable conclusion, and at least six references to your wife sitting in the front row.
- Rehearse your speech in front of the mirror, if you are attractive.
- Imagining your audience naked is passé. Imagine them weak, emotionally vulnerable, and thirsty for a peer-shared breakthrough.
- Kids, if you are preparing to give a class presentation, remember not to be fat.
- Public speaking is a lot like riding your bike: It's tiring, you get sweaty, and sooner or later you take an iron bar to the nuts.
- The first step to great speech-giving is great speech-writing. And the only way to master speech-writing is to enroll in one of the many speech-writing courses at Newbury College. Newbury, where your dreams come to life.
- It's probably best to leave unverified allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to obtain uranium from Africa out of your State Of The Union address.
- Your audience is just as afraid of you as you are of it. Don't make any sudden movements.
- Posture is important! When speaking, insert your left hand into your toga and extend your right hand toward the heavens.
- As a public speaker, you should always be given snacks before speaking. Make this clear to the audience as soon as you get on stage: No snacks, no speech.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic performs in front of large groups of strangers all the time. If that freak can do it, you ought to be able to manage.
- Remember, girls: Pear-shaped vowels, crisp consonants. Inhale through the nose, delivering the air to the diaphragm. Exhale in a graceful, circular movement. (This tip courtesy of Miss Eleanor Carlton, headmistress of Miss Carlton's Finishing Academy For Exemplary Young Women, established 1932.)
- The oldest, best-known public-speaking tip still applies: Shut the fuck up, jackass.