Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Concise Cogent Communication
Concise Cogent Communication
Concise Cogent Communication
That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
What is the rule of three? What are some famous examples? How do you use it in speeches?
Read on!
Religion
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
• Heaven, hell, and purgatory (Catholicism, primarily)
• Three Wise Men with their gold, frankincense, and myrrh
• The holy trinity
• Creator, Preserver, Destroyer
Politics
• U.S. Branches of Government: Executive, Judicial, and Legislative
• U.S. Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
• French motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
• Abundance of tri-colored flags
• Civic, Organizational, and Societal Mottos
• Fire safety motto: Stop, Drop, and Roll
• Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius or Faster, Higher, Stronger
• Real estate: Location, Location, Location
• Julius Caesar
“Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered)
• Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears.”
• Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
“We cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground.”
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people“
General MacArthur, West Point Address, 1962
“Duty, Honor, Country” [repeated several times in the speech]
• Barack Obama, Inaugural Speech
“We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America“
Use one for power. Use two for comparison, contrast. Use three for completeness, wholeness,
roundness. Use four or more to list, inventory, compile, and expand.
Hendiatris
A hendiatris is a figure of speech where three successive words are used to express a central
idea.
Examples of hendiatris include:
• “Veni, vidi, vici.” [Julius Caesar]
• “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” [French motto]
• “Citius, Altius, Fortius” [Olympic motto]
• “Wine, women, and song” [Anonymous]
Tricolon
A tricolon is a series of three parallel elements (words or phrases). In a strict tricolon, the
elements have the same length but this condition is often put aside.
Examples of tricolon include:
• “Veni, vidi, vici.” [Julius Caesar]
• “Be sincere, be brief, and be seated.” [Advice for speakers from Franklin D. Roosevelt]
• “Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of [1] the height
of our skyscrapers, or [2] the power of our military, or [3] the size of our economy.”
[Barack Obama, Keynote speech to Democratic National Convention, July 2004]
Watch the speech being delivered, and note the delivery of these key triads.
Note how memorable these passages are within the whole speech.
Examples like these cross a wide array of speech types and settings. You can study these
examples, and then apply the lessons to your own speechwriting to see how you can
incorporate the Rule of Three.
Speech Transitions
When listening to a speech, have you ever wondered “how does this relate to that?” felt the
speaker jumped randomly from one point to the next? gotten totally lost?
If you’ve experienced this, there’s a very good chance that the speaker failed to use appropriate
speech transitions. In this article, we define speech transitions and learn why they are so
critical. In addition, we provide dozens of speech transition examples that you can incorporate
into your speech.
Speech transitions smooth over the boundary between two ideas, and reveal the relationship
between the words just spoken and those about to be spoken. In this way, speech transitions
help your audience understand your message.
• Let’s return …
• Let’s revisit …
• Let’s go back to …
• We introduced X earlier; let’s explore that further now.
Miscount Transition
This faulty transition occurs when a speaker begins counting main points, but does not do so
consistently. (E.g. First, Second, Next, Next, Third, Third …) Faulty counting can also occur when
a speaker tries to number both the main points and the sub-points and gets mixed up.
Incompatible Transition
This faulty transition occurs when a speaker uses a transition word or phrase which doesn’t
match the relationship. (E.g. they start with the word “however”, but they follow it with an
example)
Tangential Transition
Transitional phrases like “That reminds me…”, “Ironically…”, or “As an aside…” are dangerous
because they often lead to an off-topic diversion which blurs the focus of the speech and
wastes time for you and your audience. Just. Don’t. Do. It.