Tag Archives: speech

May16

unleash your kindness.

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author, brad meltzer, class of ’92, gives the commencement speech at his son’s graduation

 

“My son hadn’t had a proper graduation since middle school. Here’s my commencement address at the University of Michigan, written for him & Class of 2024, “

And here is the last line: “The world needs more empathy, more humility, and certainly more decency. If you really want to shock the world, unleash your kindness.” – Brad Meltzer

 

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*Brad Meltzer is an American novelist, non-fiction writer, TV show creator, and comic book author. His novels touch on the political thriller, legal thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, while he has also written superhero fiction for DC Comics and a series of short biographies of prominent people for young readers.

 

 

 

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source credit: Alumni Association of the University of Michigan

Oct7

speak!

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giving a speech has always been a challenge for me

while i love talking

one-on-one, or to a stranger or small group

(and can do so for hours, sorry)

when i have to get up in front of an audience

finding a mic in my hand

it never turns out well

it’s never gotten easier

i’m much better

with story-telling, improv, prattling on, and going off on tangents

so i have reimagined

all of these experiences

as tiny speeches.

 

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“i can talk for a long time only when it’s about something boring.”

-lydia davis, author

 

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image credit: harvard business review

Jan18

what?! a follow-up to my exciting ‘huh’ post?!

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Because sometimes periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won’t do, here is another punctuation mark to work into your everyday communications:

INTERROBANG

You probably already know the interrobang, thanks to its popularity (You did what!?). Though the combination exclamation point and question mark can be replaced by using one of each, they can also be combined into a single glyph. The interrobang was invented by advertising executive Martin Speckter in 1962, who said “it is the typographical equivalent of a grimace or a shrug of the shoulders. It applied solely to the rhetorical, when a writer wished to convey incredulity.” The name is derived from the Latin word interrogatio, which means “questioning,” and bang—how printers refer to the exclamation mark.

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“symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama”
-tennessee williams
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source: mental flosss