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As presenters, we are concerned with saying the right words, but what we choose not to say can be just as important. What we decide to exclude will help determine what to include in a presentation. Here are some suggestions to help you omit material to strengthen your presentation.

First, leave out material the audience already knows. This requires knowing your audience well. For example, if I am training a group of experienced speakers, I may leave out material on how to cope with stage fright; they already know how to do that. Ask yourself, "What does my audience already know about my topic?" An easy way to lose your audience quickly is to share information they already have.

Second, leave out information that is not based on your personal experience, experiences of others, or specific research you have conducted. Before delivering your message, look for content that has no specific referent. Cut it out; it is unnecessary and irrelevant.

Third, leave out extraneous material. Everything you include should relate either to the point just made or to the key idea of the presentation. Whether it's a manuscript speech or an extemporaneous one, outline it and make sure everything fits in the outline. If it doesn't fit into a section of the skeleton outline, then eliminate it. Making an outline for each presentation will, in addition, help you tighten the structure and make it easier for the audience to follow you.

Excuses about your lack of preparation for the presentation are good examples of extraneous material. No one wants to waste valuable time listening to your excuses! Just give them your best effort and leave out excuses you might be tempted to include.

Fourth, leave out offensive material. Read through your script or outline of the speech and look for any material that might be considered sexist, biased, patronizing, prejudiced, insulting, or profane and leave it out. No matter how similar your audience may look to you, it is still diverse. You want to make sure that material offensive to any segment is omitted. If you are unsure about any material, leave it out.

Fifth, leave out complicated sentences and words. Oral speech is different from writing. In written script, you can have long complicated sentences and the reader can easily follow your train of thought. In speaking, however, you want to have succinct sentences. Words for the ear are short, active, alive, and instantly clear. We remember excerpts from speeches that follow these criteria: "Give me liberty or give me death!" "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself." "I have a dream." Patrick Henry, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., are remembered for their brief, incisive words.

Finally, leave out the best material--until late in the presentation. Don’t put your best ideas or evidence early in the speech. People take a little while to get into the rhythm of your delivery and content, so they may miss the best "pearl" if you put it at the beginning. People remember best what you say last (assuming that you don’t drone on forever) so you want to save your best until late in the presentation. Certainly you want to have interesting content throughout, but the early part of the speech is primarily to make the audience want to listen for more. Like a good mystery novel, the opening part whets our appetite to read further, but the author does not give the best clue until the end. The content of a speech should build to the climax near the end. Begin with an attention-getting device, but leave your most significant material until the end.

A speaker has many techniques to insure great content in a speech; in addition, use these tips on how to omit material to make a more powerful presentation. What remains should then be relevant, informative, and well-adapted to a particular audience. Remember, it is not just what you say that counts, but also what you don’t say.

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A way to develop more skill in speaking is to read both fiction and nonfiction. A well-written novel, biography, or history can increase your skills in describing an event, telling stories, and developing suspense, as well as improving your vocabulary. In reading different kinds of books, you will also find great examples you may use in your speaking. A story or historical account that excites you usually means that you can make it fit somewhere in a speech.

For example, reading a James Lee Burke novel which tells about the bayous of Louisiana can help you better to describe a scene you are seeking to make clear to an audience. Describing a city or a skyline can be improved by reading the Boston descriptions in the Spencer novels, written by Robert B. Parker.

I just finished reading A Fish Caught in Time, which tells the story of the coelacanth thought to have died out with the dinosaurs. This fascinating book described the discovery of the coelancanth and the events surrounding it. I feel I can now do a better job, as a result of reading this book, in describing events and situations I want my audience to see and feel.

Some books are good to read just to stimulate your thinking on your topic. In Roger Rosenblatt's delightful book Rules For Aging, the tongue-in-cheek approach helps broaden your perspective. For example, one of the areas I cover in speaking about delivery is the way you look. Rosenblatt has a short piece on "dress for duress." He makes the point that people should become known for a specific piece of clothing like a flamboyant hat or bow tie. His reasoning is that if you become known for an item of clothing and you do something to hurt your credibility, the item of clothing will protect you because the signature outfit represents a lifetime, an entire biography. This idea gives me additional material to consider in speaking about how we look when we deliver a presentation.

A key way to improve your speaking is to keep reading the written word! Have a larger purpose in reading than just to enjoy it, and you will be amazed how your speaking skills will be enriched.

A question I’m often asked is, "What is the most effective way in a presentation to persuade someone to do something?"

The most effective way I have found is to show in your presentation how what you are advocating has worked somewhere else. When you are persuading an audience to adopt a program, showing how that program has worked successfully elsewhere will probably have the most impact. If you tell your audience to adopt a specific benefit package and can show how that program has worked successfully for another organization similar to theirs, you have a much better chance of having that audience accept your program.

We do this all the time in personal relationships. People tell you about a movie they have seen that is really great. Chances are, the next time you choose a movie, you will go see the movie they have recommended. Learn to use this principle in your next persuasive presentation. This approach will carry the most weight in persuasion.

The way we use language in a speech is critical because the listener does not have a chance to go back over what we have said once we have said it. Our words should be instantly clear and also easily remembered. A way of doing that is to use echo words. That is simply focusing on the word you want the audience to remember and using it twice in a different form in the same sentence.

For example, when I am talking about organization in a speech and I want to stress the importance of structure, I might say, "To put structure in your next presentation, seek to structure your ideas by including a point and support." Or to stress the use of conclusions I might say, "To conclude effectively, you want to have a conclusion that not only summarizes your presentation but also leaves the audience with something to think about."

The right words stressed in different forms can help your audience more easily remember and apply what you say.