Greetings,

Another early delivery this week.

Last week it was because our son and his wife were moving house; this week it's our daughter's turn!

As you know, if you've been subscribing for some time, she's spent the past couple of years overseas, doing that Working Holiday thing. She came home for her brother's wedding and planned to return mid-year, but caught the Nesting-Bug from him and has bought herself a unit in a trendy inner-city suburb - so she's staying put for a while. (Hooray! Yippee! Wepa!)

I'm off to her flat tomorrow to help with the last minute packing and cleaning and then we're having a Girls' Night ... well, it's too far to drive home and then get back there for the removalists' arrival at 7 am ...

We all survived the Big Move last Saturday - my husband drove over to the old house to help shift all those things the removalists refuse to take: the 2 dozen half-empty tins of paint (where do they come from?); the fragile pot plants; the gardening tools you find under the house after the truck has driven down the street; the lawn-mower; and, in this case, the two German Shepherds and two kittens.

My job was to be at the new house to direct the furniture to the right rooms ... I had a floor plan, so it should have been a breeze ...

The house was built in the 50s and some time during the 70s it was jacked up and another floor was built in - so it's quite a rambling place that has two sets of stairs and a number of external doors. It's also much bigger than the 3-bedroom house they'd been renting. As I said, I had a floor plan and just had to tell the men what went Up and what stayed Down. 

Trouble was, I also had to explain what room things went into and that entailed running up and down whatever set of stairs the removalists weren't using at the time, so I could meet them in the room to get the furniture placed according to the plan ...

I only made one really big mistake, telling them that a very large dresser went in the downstairs living room ... they manoeuvred it around the awkward angles of the front terrace and had it half-way down the hall when I realised I'd been looking at the wrong floor ... for a nano-second I considered keeping quiet, but the thought of us having to wangle the monster up the stairs gave me courage to speak up.

For two big, tough men, they were very restrained and only made a couple of ever-so slightly sarcastic remarks about the "Foreman."

Oh ... and I did have to ask them to move all the wardrobes because I'd put them in the wrong bedrooms ... but apart from that ...

All this Moving On and into First Homes fits nicely with today's topic - closing a speech. (Closing the door on the renting cycle, closing a way of life, closing a speech ... see? It all goes together.)

Last week, I discussed some ways to open your speech, this week, how to get out alive!

While many professional speakers emphasise the importance of the opening, many more feel that it's the last couple of minutes that can make or break you. This is because the majority of people remember most what they hear last, so you have to ensure that you build towards a climactic point that relates to the key topic of your speech.

The best advice is that you should only close once - save some of your best points for the end, then indicate by your body language, your voice intonation, your facial expression and your words, that you've finished. Don't shuffle around; don't thank everyone in sight; don't say good-bye over and over; don't fidget and then start repeating your points. Just do it and go.

For many speakers, this is the hardest part, knowing when to leave. When I was teaching, I always warned my students about the dangers of undoing all the good work they'd done in their essays by continuing to write after they'd written the conclusion. I advised them to put down their pens and sit on their hands if they were tempted to write "just another paragraph."

If you're unsure of how to get yourself off the podium before the audience hauls you down, you can always end with a humorous story. The punch line to a funny story is a dramatic way to end your speech - once you've delivered the line, there's nothing else you need to say. A friendly smile and a nod to your audience and you can leave amid their thunderous applause.

Here are some short closers you can use:

1. Once there was a little baby cabbage who said to his mother, "Mummy, I've been sitting here in this row of cabbages, just growing and growing. But I'm worried that I won't know when to stop."

"The rule to follow," said his mother, "is to quit when you're a head."

2. A small boy was stretching as high as he could to reach a door bell that was still a few inches out of his reach.

A passer-by took pity on him and picked him up so he could ring the bell. "Now what?" he said to the boy.

"I don't know about you, mister," said the little boy, "but I'm going to start running as fast as I can."

3. After listening for over an hour to a guest at a cocktail party do bird imitations, his listeners were fit to scream.

"And now," he said, "I'll imitate any bird you request. Name a bird, any bird."

From the back of the room a guest shouted, "A homing pigeon!"

Here's a story Leo sent in; keep it in mind the next time you're called upon to speak in public:

A few years ago I attended a motivational type seminar with a group of
nudists at a friend's home.  We in the audience [about 20-30 of us] were
nude.  The speaker was the only clothed person in the room.  He began by
saying that one of the techniques he offers students of his public
speaking seminars to help avoid the jitters of public speaking was to
visualize the audience being naked.  Now that he was faced with that
fact, he said it just wasn't the same trying to visualize the audience
with their clothes on.  Which of course drew a big laugh.  Even though
he obviously had some initial jitters himself because of the unique
situation he found himself in, he went on to give a fine presentation.

This week's quiz:

Match the word in the list with its meaning below:

conurbation, oneiric, nonage, caveat, patina, coruscate, atelier, provenance, execrable, itinerant

2. detestable; extremely bad

3. a superficial layer

4. origin; source

5. a warning or caution

6. a period of immaturity; minority

7. a workshop; a studio

8. to sparkle

9. going from place to place

10.an aggregation or continuous network of urban communities

Richard English has leapt to the defence of the language after last week's comments about how difficult it can be to learn:

In spite of our huge vocabulary (at least double the size of that of any other language) and the manifold eccentricities of our grammar, spelling and pronunciation, English is a simple language to acquire at an adequate conversational level. Let's face it, we have no genders; our nouns, pronouns and adjectives barely decline; our verbs are mainly regular and in any case, change little according to person; we have only one definite article and two indefinite articles. Contrast that with German where there are theoretically sixteen forms of the definite article according to case and quite arbitrary gender rules (das Auto [neuter], der Wagen [masculine], die Wagenladung [feminine]). I won't even start to describe some of German's other grammatical complexities!

English is a wonderful language, accessible to all, easy to learn to a conversational level - and capable of incredible levels of sophistication in the hands of an aficionado! (Richard English www.retraining-uk.com )

Last week's quiz:

Oops ... sorry about that - I gave you the answer to number 5 last week.

Match each word in the list with its meaning below: ardour, mellifluous, insouciant, tawdry, pellucid, desiccate, volubility, harrow, dulcet, dross

A company, feeling it was time for a shake-up, hires a new CEO. This new boss is determined to rid the company of all slackers.

On a tour of the facilities, the CEO notices a guy leaning on a wall. The room is full of workers, and the CEO thinks this is his chance to show everyone he means business!

He walks up to the guy and asks, "And how much money do you make a week?"

Undaunted, the young fellow looks at him and replies, "I make $200 a week. Why?"

The CEO then hands the guy $200 in cash and screams, "I pay my employees to work, not stand around. Here's a week's pay; now GET OUT and don't come back!"

Feeling pretty good about his first firing, the CEO looks around the room at the shocked expression on everyone's face and asks, "Does anyone want to tell me what that slacker did here?"

With a sheepish grin, one of the other workers mutters, "He's the pizza delivery guy."  

(Leo sent this in after last week's references to pizzas.)

And here are some words of wisdom from Steve Wright:

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese

If you know anyone who would like to subscribe to The Write Way, please send them a personal invitation to join us each Friday, just cut and paste this link and email it to them: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 

Word of the Week:  Glossophobia (n) Fear of speaking in public or of trying to speak. (The Phobialist) 

(Go on ... gasp in admiration at how relevant this is to the topic this week!)

Tautology of the week:  present incumbent

This week's Latin phrase is an all-purpose way to bemoan the state of ... just about anything really.

O tem-POH-ra! O MOH-rays!

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