(I-Newswire) March 13, 2010 - The Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA) has named The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional an official sponsor of its annual conference, meeting June 25-26 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Founded in 1987 by math author Mike Keedy, TAA is a nonprofit membership association dedicated to helping writers enhance the quality of textbooks and other academic materials, such as journal articles, monographs and scholarly books, in all fields and disciplines.
Philip Yaffe, author of The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional, is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal, teacher of journalism, account executive with a major international press relations agency, European marketing communication director with two major international companies, and a founding partner of a marketing communication agency in Brussels, Belgium.
The premise of his book is that effective writing and public speaking both depend on the same handful of easy-to-understand concepts. Unfortunately, the two disciplines are often taught separately, as if they had nothing to do with each other.
"This is a mistake," Mr. Yaffe says. "If you write well you will probably speak well; if you write poorly you will probably speak poorly. Writing and speaking are intimately related and should be considered together, rather than as distinct skills."
To demonstrate the point, The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional addresses the challenge head on.
Inspired by Abraham Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg Address," the book examines the handful of underlying principles and practices that make this miniature masterpiece (only 272 words) perhaps the greatest single piece of prose and oratory in history.
“The principles of effective writing and speaking are few and easy to understand," Mr. Yaffe asserts. "Unfortunately, in most books on the subject, they are buried under an avalanche of verbiage about technique.” The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional clearly separates principle from practice. The “theoretical” section of the book is very short, supplemented by a series of appendices of illuminating examples and exercises.
TAA's review of the book was written by Dr. Janet Belsky, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Middle Tennessee State University and author of numerous textbooks on human development.
Dr. Belsky notes that The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional covers all the standard suggestions that one would expect from such a book, e.g. be concise, stick to the topic, include everything the reader needs to know, cut out what is irrelevant, etc. However, unlike other authors, "Yaffe illustrates these principles via catchy formulas such as Co = LS (concise = long as necessary and short as possible). Far more informative, he provides numerous examples showing why sentences and paragraphs are poorly written and how they can be improved."
"I was particularly captivated by his counterintuitive writing tips," Dr. Belsky says. "Here’s a sampler:
• Write the executive summary before you compose the body of a report. It alerts you to what you should emphasize as you go along.
• Contrary to what we are often taught, sometimes a logically constructed longer sentence is easier to understand than several shorter ones.
• It’s perfectly acceptable to write paragraphs that are very short (one sentence) when you want to highlight or set them off."
Being a university lecturer, not surprisingly her favorite part of the book was the section on public speaking, "because of its wealth of simple, counterintuitive insights."
For example, to keep an audience engaged, regularly look at least one person directly in the eye. People automatically become more alert when they feel you are addressing them as individuals, not as an amorphous group. Another way is to avoid just lecturing, but to ask questions. People can't resist testing themselves to see if they know the answers.
"Here’s another suggestion that can go against the grain: Keep summing up and summing up and then summing up again. You will think you are being excessively repetitive. However, because words evaporate into thin air, your audience—even when they are fellow academics—will conclude, This presentation is really clear".
Dr. Belsky concludes her review by highlighting a principle "that seems obvious in retrospect, but that we tend to often overlook. Don’t make your PowerPoint's 'dense' (filled with a lot of writing). Abbreviate bulleted information, and put only a few points on each slide. Fancy technologies, such as dancing bears, that seem so dazzling, are apt to backfire and take away from a presentation. After all, the purpose is not to have people focus on the slides, but listen to you.
"I highly recommend The Gettysburg Approach to Writing and Speaking like a Professional."
Biographical Information
Philip Yaffe was born in Boston in 1942 and grew up in Los Angeles. In 1965 he graduated in mathematics from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), where he was also editor-in-chief of the Daily Bruin, the daily student newspaper.
Mr. Yaffe has more than 40 years of experience in journalism and marketing communication. At various points in his career, he has been a teacher of journalism, a reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal, an account executive with a major international press relations agency, European marketing communication director with two major international companies, and a founding partner of a marketing communication agency in Brussels, Belgium, where he has lived since 1974.
He can be reached either at phil.yaffe@yahoo.com or phil.yaffe@gmail.com.
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