Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent?

52 pointsTotoHorner27 comments

Whenever I talk, I tend to repeat words and add in a lot of ums and ahs.

I also feel like I don’t have a great vocabulary and that I keep reusing the same words over and over again while talking. (I read a lot and have a good vocabulary when reading but for some reason I can’t recall those words when I’m talking improvisationally).

I’m wondering if there are any strategies/exercises/books/whatever that I can do/consume to become more eloquent?

Most material online seems to be around public speaking and giving better presentations.

Instead, I’m looking for material that will help me with expressing myself better in everyday conversation.

Thank you!

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I strongly recommend playing the SpeechSkills SoundBites[0] game with someone for a few minutes per day. I just had it on my dining room table and after dinner I'd play it for <5 minutes with my partner. My verbal skills - especially in normal impromptu conversation - got dramatically better after a week or two.

Essentially the key is feedback, ideally instantaneous and non-disruptive. So one person reads a prompt and starts their response. The other person starts the timer and merely raises their hand and/or counts the number of "undesirable" words/sounds that come out.

Focus on one skill at a time, e.g. if you are focusing on cutting out filler words, do not even think about eye contact. If you are focusing on eye contact, do not even think about the content of your words.

[0] https://www.speechskills.com/speechskills-resources/soundbit... - but these are really just a bunch of prompt cards. You can make your own or surely find some prompt set for much less, just make sure they're not intellectually or emotionally challenging. The whole point is just verbal processing!

I like the idea of this, but $149 for a deck of cards...?

Yeah I was also shocked by that lol. I don’t think I paid that much however many years ago I bought them… at least I hope I didn’t!

It looks like they have a free sample they’ll email you from their site. You can probably take it as inspiration and make your own deck if you want!

Sounds like Just a Minute[1]. You have to speak for one minute on a subject. You may not deviate from the subject (or the English language), repeat yourself (except the words literally on the card) or hesitate (including umm and ah).

There are hundreds of episodes: the original presenter, Nicholas Parsons, held the chair for over 50 years, and it's still going. You can find some on the Internet Archive.

While the panelists on national radio are perhaps above average in terms of wit and comedic turns, it's also good fun at home or in the car. And all you need is a timer and a few subjects on cards (literally can be anything).

Having to avoid umm and ah is half the game. A well-timed pause for thought between words (but not long enough to be hesitation) may be tolerable, but an umm is an instant handover of the subject to the next player.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Minute

Advice: slow down when you are talking, don't try to play catch up between your mouth and your thoughts. You will stutter and "umm" "hmmm" less automatically. Also because of this it is likely that your mannerisms will become more coordinated and your voice will be a bit lower, which will add to the "eloquent" image.

Exercise: Pick a topic and talk about it for 5 minutes in front of a recording camera on your computer (on a Mac QuickTime can do this). Then watch how you look and sound, notice the things you don't like, adjust them, and iterate.

I agree with this. My take is that it’s less about vocabulary and more about anxiety: worrying about and focusing on how you’re perceived, whether you sound like an idiot, thinking about what you’re going to say next. Learning to be present in the moment and release your anxiety can help a lot. The usual boring solutions apply: meditation, exercise, diet, sleep, and practice.

Shameless plug: eloquence and style is an incredibly deep subject. I have a few articles on my blog just about "rhythm" alone [1] [2], and that's only one small piece of the puzzle.

Despite being just a small piece of the puzzle, people obsess over it. Virginia Woolf, in a letter to a friend, said:

> Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand, here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it

Eloquence in general... you can spend a lifetime on it

[1] https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/p/on-rhythm-in-pulpy-fi...

[2] https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/p/rhythm-in-quentin-tar...

Public speaking and giving better presentations are both good skills to practice to become more articulate in an informal conversational setting. The core principle is the same: think before you speak. Sometimes, you have the benefit of thinking well in advance (in the case of rehearsed speeches or when speaking about a topic that you're familiar with/have previous explained to others). Sometimes, not so much. Even so: many conversations are extremely forgiving of even a very long pause to collect your thoughts, especially if you make a habit of doing so. People are willing to wait for a clear answer/explanation.

There are also apps out there to help with practice. Speeko is one that I'm familiar with and use regularly (protip: you can get access to it through Setapp if you use Apple devices). If you want, it'll even record your meetings and give you real-time feedback on your pacing, filler words, etc. It also has a pretty fair amount of structured learning material that is really worth working through if speaking well is important to you.

(I have no relation with Setapp nor Speeko other than as a happy customer. If you want, you can use my referral link to sign up for Setapp and we'll both get a free month: https://go.setapp.com/invite/qct2ch6z)

I'm considered eloquent and poetic and I hardly ever mean to be.

I appear to do this by 'throwing the dart wrong', and storing similar concepts adjacently.

Like I just did in the sentence above. I could have said, "choosing incorrectly from adjacent elements".

But I didn't; I chose the vivid, short, memorable form that came up first when reached for <unintentional variability in speech performance due to inefficient retrieval selection and poor discrimination between adjacent concepts>.

You'll remember the dart and the dartboard, not the phrase between angle-brackets above.

Slight errors can make you memorable, and eloquence is basically memorability

I understand how you do it but I don't understand why that is eloquent and poetic. I wouldn't want someone to constantly choose related but incorrect concepts. That wouldn't really be a good communication, it seems to me.

If you want labels for misbehavior like that, check out Grice's maxims of conversation.

That you read unintentional variation as misbehaviour is like rejecting food not made at McDonalds.

Actually, this is a great teachable moment. This is the crux of it.

Engineers value precise repetition, what Deleuze calls 'mechanical' repetition.

Writing, like cuisine, is about 'difference that contains its own differencing', again, as Deleuze put it. (Sounds better in French but if you chew on it you can suck the meaning-marrow from the consonants).

Eloquence comes from the space between symmetries, which is why it's so hard for engineers to master.

Indeed, 'mastery' is already quite the wrong tenor

Your writing makes me think you're a bot.

And yet here I am, flesh and blood. I can't prove it; it's late 2022. Oh well.

You'd think so! But it works a little bit like 'constructive interference' in radio reception.

A little bit of cognitive brownian motion does wonders to warm up tone.

Speaking/writing like this comes off as pretentious to me. Have you heard that before?

Come as you are. Emulating some Ted talk is unnecessary when you can tap into your own personality, add your own idiosyncratic twist on things. Public speaking gets better over time, the more you do it. You learn to drop your ego and forget the audience and are just there to spread knowledge, which is what all talks and presentations really should be about: sharing information and knowledge.

It helps if you add humor, as the occasional meme spliced with your talk will speak magnitudes of volume than a boring (non-humorous) slide.

Check out your local Toastmasters club. Public speaking is part of it, but meetings also feature conversations on a topic.

For me, taking improv lessons helped a lot. It forces you to focus less on trying to be funny (or eloquent) yourself, and more on paying attention and reacting to your scene (or conversational) partner. Doing so in real-time helps with recall, which should unlock (useful) vocabulary, connections, and ideas.

I second Toastmasters. Just visit a local meeting before committing to see how it works. There is a Toastmaster who is the emcee that runs the meeting and makes sure all roles are explained, and one of the roles is an "Uh/Um Counter" - litteraly someone who counts how many times each speaker says "Uh", "Um", or some other filler word, and then provides feedback or suggestions going forward.

To start with, learning to communicate clearly at all is very hard to do. Even if you speak in an uncertain, quiet, awkward tone, if you are communicating something interesting in a vivid way, you can sell people on what you're saying.

Look at some old Elon Musk talks -- he's so awkward and nerdy, but nobody cares because he is successfully communicating his ideas.

Clear communication often involves an active voice with a clear verbs. Nominalized nouns are your enemy unless your intention is to be vague. Pretend that the person you're talking to is a computer that is rendering what you describe -- is there enough information to visualize or imagine it? Fluff sentences hurt too. Concrete specifics help.

Eg, "Joe swung the bat and hit the baseball, with a CRACK; and away it flew deep into the field" is better than the more corporate, "a baseball situation was observed after the object was acted upon by an implement, and the synergy involved was said to be breathtaking."

Also: just being super clear on what you are trying to say helps a ton. Being super clear, logically, why your idea is a good one is also necessary. The logic should be correct, and not just sound nice.

For a long time I've subscribed to dictionary.com word of the day..I learn it and try to incorporate it somehow within 24 hours so I recall it..this has vastly improved my lexicon and I found using the bigger words can sometimes fill in the umms and ahhs. I also practice speeches in the mirror or by myself before I do them in front of others!

I once took part on a seminar to improve on presentation skills. We had to present on a topic and we were recorded. You can later watch yourself and see how you sound, how much you hurry through sentences, etc. We repeated the process and within one hour you could see substantial improvements in everyone.

You are not trying to become more eloquent. You are trying to communicate more effectively.

1. Be clear. Write down your complicated thoughts, then simplify them until anyone could understand them. (Hopefully you already do this with your code!) 2. Learn from the best sources. Warren Buffett has spoken highly of Dale Carnegie's public speaking course. I would start there.

The Elements of Eloquence, 2013, Mark Forsyth

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Eloquence

Practice for the GRE. Don't take it, just do the prep for the verbal section. You'll learn all sorts of words!

Ever tried doing improv? Could find a group online

I find reading and my daily speech to be intimately connected. I would invest more time in reading florid writing.

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