The care and feeding of the executive speaker

There are both intellectual and practical problems in the work of a speech writer. Prominent in the first category are (a) the fact that people are seldom persuaded by reason if they have an opposing emotional commitment and (b) the amount of information remembered from a speech may be inversely proportional to the amount presented. On the practical side, a speech writer must cope with everyone who wants to get into the act between the writer and the speaker. Writing for the ear rather than the eye also involves amplifying through repetition, using sentence fragments, and planning appropriate pauses.