Webinars, events and interviews in policy heavy-Brussels would get a rocket boost if all speakers did these three simple things:
1. Shortened their sentences;
2. Swapped multi-syllable words for shorter, punchier ones that make the same point.
3. Left pauses between key ideas.
This is because a major difference between spoken and written communication is that a speaker is in charge of how easily their audience absorbs their information, not just the information itself.
You can’t rewind an overly-complex speaker, whereas you can re-read a bit of thorny text.
Doing these three things would make the audience’s life a lot easier, and the speaker’s message easier to follow and remember.
And this is before we’ve even got onto the more challenging areas of jargon and messaging….
