Secret Tips for Public Speaking

I've recently been doing a lot of public speaking at work; my role at Monster has developed into one where I represent the company not only to media and on speaker panels, but also in customer presentations (at which I discuss trends in recruiting and so on). At these presentations, it's just me, some slides, and between 50 and 100 people ready to listen to me for an hour or more.

Among my friends, I've been calling these presentations "The Charles Purdy Show." In August, the Charles Purdy show has run in Austin, Texas; Davenport, Iowa; and Santa Clara, California—next week, the show goes on the road again, and I'll be appearing in Lincoln, Nebraska.

There's lots of advice on public speaking out there on the Web, and I've read some of it. (Public speaking didn't come naturally to me—I'm actually very shy.) But I've come up with some "secrets" of my own in the past few months. I thought I'd share them.

1. Show up early and meet attendees. The more audience members I meet before the presentation, the better the presentation goes. I like to stand by the registration table or just walk around and introduce myself as the speaker. If you want people to ask questions or otherwise participate, telling them this, individually when you introduce yourself, is very helpful.

2. Find a friend. This is something standup comics do all the time, and I find that it really warms up an audience—comics often single out someone in the audience and talk to him or her directly throughout a performance.

Here's an example of how I do it: One of my presentations is on attracting and retaining Generation Y workers. At the start of the presentation, I ask people to raise their hands if they were born in 1989 or 1990 (and I widen the range until at least one person has raised a hand). When I have one or two people, I ask their names and nominate them as "Gen Y representatives." Throughout the rest of the presentation, I either reference them or ask them direct questions. (For instance, after I find a Gen Y-er named Lauren, when I then mention a negative stereotype of this generation, I say "No offense, Lauren." And when I show a slide that talks about Gen Y's values, I ask, "Would you agree with this, Lauren?") Don't overdo it—but connecting with one audience member can help you connect to the whole audience.

3. Flub your lines. Just once or twice, near the beginning of your presentation but after you feel you've established yourself as an authority, make a minor mistake—something you can laugh about. I swear this works! People don't like presenters that are too polished and perfect, and bouncing back from a flub shows that you are not just a "presenting automaton" but rather are in the moment and responsive to your environment. (And being in the moment is key to great presenting!)

You may not be able to make misspeaking seem genuine (and if you feel you can't, then don't try it), but what about, say, "accidentally" repeating a slide and making a self-deprecating joke? I did this for real once—and discovered that it works.

(Along these lines, you should never be reading during a presentation if you can avoid it. Use an outline for notes, but reading makes eye contact impossible.)

4. Give people your contact information first. I always begin presentations with my email address—and tell people that I will send them a copy of the slides (if I can) and that I'll answer questions. This releases people from the bondage of note-taking and also lets me represent myself in a friendly way.

5. Don't picture the audience in their underwear. I don't know how this became a touchstone of public-speaking advice—I think it's terrible. I, instead, concentrate on why they came to hear me speak. I think of how my presentation will help them in their jobs. And I picture them happy (and fully dressed). I consciously repeat to myself, "I like these people"—I find that this makes me smile more and remain more open-minded.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Review of "Tales of the City: A New Musical"

As much as it pains me to say so, the new musical version of Tales of the City is not as wonderful as it might be. I say this with love and a desire to help—the show is currently in previews; one assumes they’re still tinkering.

Like everyone I know, I adore the books—not only as gems of popular American literature, but also on a deeply personal level: the books are about my city and my friends. They are about me.

I also adore musicals. So I expected this to be a giddily delightful theater-going experience.

There were a few moments that approached this: When the show is funny, it is at its best. Dissatisfied society wife DeDe Halcyon-Day has, I think, two of the best songs (her musical seduction of a Chinese-food delivery guy was one of the highlights of the first act). Among the dramatic numbers, Michael Tolliver’s musical delivery of the coming-out letter he wrote for his mother was moving. (All credit for that lyric is of course due Armistead Maupin.)

All the major players in the show did well in their parts. But here’s the thing, maybe: At their heart, the Tales books (at least the first couple of them) are very, very, very sweet. The good people at 28 Barbary Lane are very good. Even the messed-up, confused ones have hearts of pure gold. (Bad people are punished. Love conquers all. Society’s misfits prevail. We are all cosmically connected. And so on.) Then, the traditional musical relies on this sort of simple sweetness and morality. So the sweetness of the tale and the sweetness of the format combine to make this musical cloying. I wondered whether the writers could have cut some of the treacle by pumping up the raunchiness factor. The show’s “raunchiness” has a cartoonish quality (as do the books’—but putting cartoonish raunchiness to song amplifies that quality in a cringe-y way). I wished for a bit of grit. Mona’s drug use is too adorable. Michael’s romantic heartbreak is too wistful. (Or maybe I’m just too cynical and awful.) The scene with the jockey-shorts contest was entirely too PG. I’m thinking of the film version of the musical Cabaret when I think of cartoonish raunchiness that had a good gritty quality.

And that’s enough of the word raunchy, I think.

The adaptation of the book was quite literal, mood-wise (some plot elements were shifted a teensy bit). We have the benefit, now, of hindsight—of knowing what comes after the freewheeling 1970s; I don’t think it would have been out of place to drop a little bit of foreshadowing into this version of the story.

I was most surprised by how forgettable the music was. The talent involved in creating the music is formidable: Jake Shears and John Garden of the group Scissor Sisters are credited. But I wondered whether they felt oppressed by this unfamiliar genre. All the songs were generically “musical-esque”—and the show was heavy on ballads. I wanted a few catchier tunes. This show didn't feel like a musical journey to the 1970s—I (and all the other old queens in the audience) should have felt like getting up and dancing! I didn't. I wanted Mrs. Madrigal to have an "I Am What I Am" moment instead of quite so much maternal concern. The songs in this musical should be headed right for remixes and modern discos. … They should end up at The Endup. I don't see that happening.

Adapting such a well-loved book series must have been daunting. Fitting the complex story into three hours must’ve been very difficult (the plot might perhaps be simplified). I hope the show gets a little bit of retooling, because I want to love it and I think I could!

Here a Blog, There a Blog, Everywhere a Blog-Blog

I'm blogging (occasionally) about LGBT stuff again, on Queerty. This week's post is about whether we should boycott mixed-sex weddings. And, you know, I continue to blog it up over at Monster.com!

Illogical Punctuation

Slate columnist Ben Yagoda recently wrote about a standard punctuation rule in American English: the placement of commas and periods inside quotation marks when those quotation marks enclose a title or some kinds of quoted material.

For example, we would write:

I love the song "Bad Romance," don't you?

Not:

I love the song "Bad Romance", don't you?

There are a few reasons for this preference. A primary one is that, long ago, American typesetters agreed that text looked better this way (putting below-the-baseline punctuation marks inside quotation marks prevents unsightly gaps in blocks of text). Another reason is mere tradition. This is just the way we do it.

In his well-reasoned post, Yagoda argues that this rule is illogical; he would rather that our periods and commas not intrude on titles like this. And his argument makes sense.

He also argues that a lot of people are already ignoring the rule when writing online. In the continuing language debate between prescriptivism and descriptivism, Yagoda is on, in this case, the side of descriptivism: that is, the "right" way to write is the way that enough people are doing it. (The definition of the word enough is a whole 'nother conversation; I'm not sure if enough people use its and it's interchangeably for a descriptivist argument that we should do away with the distinction, but I hope not.)

But "everyone else is doing it" is not a persuasive argument, and I know your momma taught you that. In the end, we, sadly, can't always let logic dictate how we write. By extension of the logic argument, we would spell words phonetically—English spelling is notoriously illogical and dependent on tradition, and this causes all sorts of problems and misunderstandings.

Here's the best reason to use standard punctuation as it's outlined by the major style guides, such as our dear Chicago: Punctuation shouldn't call attention to itself—it shouldn't get in the way of what a writer is trying to say. If a reader notices your punctuation, you're probably doing it wrong. If you often have to explain to people that the way you're punctuating something is not, in fact, an error, your punctuation isn't working for you.

I'd guess that the typical general-interest online reader doesn't know (or doesn't care about) where commas go in relation to a closing quotation mark. Seeing a comma in either place won't bother her. But people who know the rule will be momentarily jolted out of their reading every time they come across a period in the "wrong" place. Like them, I'll be happily reading along and suddenly interrupted by the thought "Typo?" flitting across my consciousness.

The purpose of grammar rules isn't to allow the people who know them to feel superior. (Most people get by just fine without knowing them.) Their purpose is to help writers express themselves clearly by using mutually understood guidelines.

Having standards (even arbitrary ones, like some punctuation rules and the spelling of a great many English words) allows writers and editors to concentrate on getting meanings across, without having to waste time wondering and debating about where the comma goes. The answer is right there, in Chicago. We don't have to worry about it.