Regardless of what the theories may be about manuscript delivery, the fact remains that it does not work out with efficiency. Avoid it whenever at all possible.

Committing the Written Speech and Speaking from Memory

This method has certain points in its favor.  If you have time and leisure, it is possible to polish and rewrite your ideas until they are expressed in clear, concise terms.  Pope sometimes spent a whole day in perfecting one couplet.  Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material for and rewriting the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”  Although you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a sentence and choose proper illustrations.  Good speeches, like plays, are not written; they are rewritten.  The National Cash Register Company follows this plan with their most efficient selling organization:  they require their salesmen to memorize verbatim a selling talk.  They maintain that there is one best way of putting their selling arguments, and they insist that each salesman use this ideal way rather than employ any haphazard phrases that may come into his mind at the moment.

The method of writing and committing has been adopted by many noted speakers; Julius Caesar, Robert Ingersoll, and, on some occasions, Wendell Phillips, were distinguished examples.  The wonderful effects achieved by famous actors were, of course, accomplished through the delivery of memorized lines.

The inexperienced speaker must be warned before attempting this method of delivery that it is difficult and trying.  It requires much skill to make it efficient.  The memorized lines of the young speaker will usually sound like memorized words, and repel.

If you want to hear an example, listen to a department store demonstrator repeat her memorized lingo about the newest furniture polish or breakfast food.  It requires training to make a memorized speech sound fresh and spontaneous, and, unless you have a fine native memory, in each instance the finished product necessitates much labor.  Should you forget a part of your speech or miss a few words, you are liable to be so confused that, like Mark Twain’s guide in Rome, you will be compelled to repeat your lines from the beginning.

On the other hand, you may be so taken up with trying to recall your written words that you will not abandon yourself to the spirit of your address, and so fail to deliver it with that spontaneity which is so vital to forceful delivery.

But do not let these difficulties frighten you.  If committing seems best to you, give it a faithful trial.  Do not be deterred by its pitfalls, but by resolute practise avoid them.

One of the best ways to rise superior to these difficulties is to do as Dr. Wallace Radcliffe often does:  commit without writing the speech, making practically all the preparation mentally, without putting pen to paper—­a laborious but effective way of cultivating both mind and memory.