I am a font.  I’m Copperplate31ab.

You’re a font—Southbee Two. 

I am elegant and stately—I live on wedding invitations.

You are playful and informal.  You live beside railroad tracks, and on those rock walls along two-lane roads.  High-school Romeos proclaim their love with you.

I win points for being subtle and intellectual. 

You get points for being real and authentic.

I get points for balance and restraint.

You get points for telling it like it is.

I get penalized for being professorial and aloof. 

You get penalized for being overly simplistic and intemperate.

I can succeed in places that you can’t, and you can win the war of words where I can’t even gain entrance.

I am a font—Copperplate31ab.  I grew up in Hawaii and California.  My father was from Africa, my mother from Kansas. 

You are a font—Southbee Two.  You grew up at Andover and Yale, and maybe a little in the White House.

How come I’m Copperplate? I should be Southbee.

And how did you get to be Southbee? You should be Copperplate.

We should stop trying to be the fonts we want to be, and start being the fonts we are.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark in Shakespeare’s play called Hamlet, written around 1603.   He hires a bunch of actors to put on a play that he’s written, and he gives them coaching on how to speak their lines.

Four-hundred and six years later, what he says remains good advice for a presenter too.  Look how he’s telling them to speak clearly—“don’t talk as if you had marbles in your mouth,” he’s saying.

Also, he warns them not to wave their hands around too much because while passion is a great thing in a speaker, too much passion damages their credibility and distracts the audience from what they’re saying.

Here it is:

“Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you,

trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players

do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the

air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the

very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it

smoothness.”

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Act 3, Scene 1

Go to executivespeechcoachny.com to see more ancient wisdom from a speaker coach who was actually a Prince.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.