{"id":81,"date":"2007-08-22T05:48:13","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T12:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/be-brief-and-be-seated-exercises-in-economy"},"modified":"2016-10-02T06:26:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T13:26:11","slug":"be-brief-and-be-seated-exercises-in-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/be-brief-and-be-seated-exercises-in-economy","title":{"rendered":"Be Brief and Be Seated: Exercises in Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Franklin Roosevelt once gave his son this advice on public speaking: &#8220;Be sincere, be brief and be seated.&#8221; Here are some ideas from around the web to help you teach brevity to your students:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.onesentence.org\">Onesentence.org<\/a>&#8211;Tell a significant story about your life in one sentence. Examples:\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Knowing that my miscarriage brought him relief is something I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ll ever forget.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I married my husband on our first date, but it has taken me more than 5 years to decide what colour to paint our dining room.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It was one of those exams that you absolutely must pass if you want to continue in the program, and I failed the set-your-alarm-clock-properly portion.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;When asked to name the one person absent from her life that she missed the most, she responded, &#8216;The person I hoped I&#8217;d be by this point in my life.'&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Recently I realized that I waste my life on the internet &#8230; and published this insight in a blog.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fwfr.com\/\">Four Word Film Review<\/a>&#8211;Examples for <em>The Simpsons Movie<\/em>\n<ul>\n<li>Just D&#8217;oh It!<\/li>\n<li>More Doh for Groening<\/li>\n<li>Why, Caramba?<\/li>\n<li>Magnum D&#8217;OH!-pus<\/li>\n<li>Stupendously Silly Simpsons Satire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.addreviews.com\/\">ADD Music Reviews<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.addmovies.com\/\">ADD Movie Reviews<\/a>: Reviews in 20 words or less<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And one of my favorite concepts, the <a href=\"http:\/\/members.ozemail.com.au\/~collinsb\/bc\/fw\/50words.htm\">50-word story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Pretty High-Powered Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The assistant was explaining. &#8220;With this microscope, we can look ten thousand times closer than ever before. Inside the nucleus of a single atom.&#8221; he told waiting press. The eminent professor &#8211; privileged first observer &#8211; cried out, aghast. &#8220;What did you see?&#8221; they asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;a-another universe,&#8221; he stammered, &#8220;&#8230;just like ours.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Ultimate Technological Advance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A nation waited, speechless. Press were informed of new developments. &#8220;Our secret computer links with Moscow have detected a major nuclear offensive against us. We had no option but launch warheads into Russian territory. Four minutes and counting. Prepare for war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A hungry soviet mouse continued chewing into the wires<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can read some of the best 50-word stories in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html%3FASIN=0762403004%26tag=nickslists-20%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=\/o\/ASIN\/0762403004%253FSubscriptionId=1N9AHEAQ2F6SVD97BE02\" target=\"_blank\">The World&#8217;s Shortest Stories<\/a><\/em> edited by Steve Moss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Franklin Roosevelt once gave his son this advice on public speaking: &#8220;Be sincere, be brief and be seated.&#8221; Here are some ideas from around the web to help you teach brevity to your students:&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[303,305,304],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-50-word-stories","tag-four-world-film-review","tag-onesentence-org"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPveS-1j","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}