For those who are new to the drafting industry, one thing that is difficult to grasp in the process of drafting speeches for leaders is what the essence of speeches is.
In my understanding, the speech is still an official document in essence, so it can never be something like a drama script, but must be a type that can be printed out. Written language for humans to read. However, it is not pure written language like an official document, it is all dry words. So, to be precise, the essence of the speech is the spoken written language.
Why do I say that people who are new to drafting have a poor grasp of this essence? Let me explain with a few stories.
The first story: I once revised a speech written by a person. From beginning to end, it was almost a commonplace, ramble, sloppy, full of car and reel words. And what’s more interesting is that the country dialect can be written in it. After so many years, what I still remember is that he used a dialect of Jiaodong area in his speech: “Keep the things in your hands in the field.” Ladies, if you are not from Jiaodong, just read this sentence If so, do you know what it means? Let me explain ha! “Field” means “place” in Jiaodong dialect. “Stable” is “an adjective used like a verb”, which means “put down, put down”. The phrase “hold the things in your hand in the field” actually means “put the things in your hand there”. You say it’s a little funny that such language is written into the speech?
Second story: I once changed a cadre’s report when he returned from abroad to his superiors, and there were a lot of jokes in it. The cadre led a delegation to visit Japan. After returning to China, he did not know what the old man thought, so he asked the accompanying people to write a report casually. It is said that the cadre who led the team also changed it himself, and it was this revised report that made me look at it. This is a mess, basically a running account sitting across from you and “pulling” with you. It just said that he attended several banquets, toasted several times during the banquet, and the guests from both sides sang together, and from time to time there was a “small climax” and so on. It gives the impression that the most impressive thing about this delegation’s trip to Japan is the food and drink. As a result, I had to tell the cadre directly that such a thing must not be reported to the municipal party committee, otherwise it would be embarrassing.
Third story: A colleague of mine in the past had a problem with writing, that is, he could use long and long sentences, and some sentences were as complicated as the various sentences in English. kind of clauses. In the most extreme case, when he handed me the first draft of the speech he wrote for the leader, there was a large paragraph without a full stop in the middle. At the time, he entertained me and said to him with a smile: “You read this paragraph you wrote yourself, can you hold your breath while reading such a sentence in one breath?” He also smiled embarrassedly.
In the above situations, in fact, they did not grasp the essence of the “spoken written language” of the speech, either too colloquial or completely forgotten. change.
It is for this reason that I have asked my colleagues more than once to read a manuscript after drafting it, even if the manuscript has been revised by the leader. Don’t let it go blindly. Moreover, this kind of read-through must be read aloud, because only when you read it aloud will you find out which parts of the manuscript are awkward to read, and then you can revise these small bugs in a targeted manner, so that the entire manuscript can be read. Rigorous and precise, and “blood smooth”, it becomes a good article with clear expression, smooth reasoning and natural style of writing.