Tests Scope of Content

When you begin with a clear, concrete thesis statement, it acts as kind of a compass for your outline. Each of the main points should directly explicate the thesis statement. The test of the scope will be a comparison of each main point to the thesis statement. If you find a poor match, you will know you’ve wandered outside the scope of the thesis.

Let’s say the general purpose of your speech is to inform, and your broad topic area is wind-generated energy. Now you must narrow this to a specific purpose. You have many choices, but let’s say your specific purpose is to inform a group of property owners about the economics of wind farms where electrical energy is generated.

Your first main point could be that modern windmills require a very small land base, making the cost of real estate low. This is directly related to economics. All you need is information to support your claim that only a small land base is needed.

In your second main point, you might be tempted to claim that windmills don’t pollute in the ways other sources do. However, you will quickly note that this claim is unrelated to the thesis. You must resist the temptation to add it. Perhaps in another speech, your thesis will address environmental impact, but in this speech, you must stay within the economic scope. Perhaps you will say that once windmills are in place, they require virtually no maintenance. This claim is related to the thesis. Now all you need is supporting information to support this second claim.

Your third point, the point some audience members will want to hear, is the cost for generating electrical energy with windmills compared with other sources. This is clearly within the scope of energy economics. You should have no difficulty finding authoritative sources of information to support that claim.

When you write in outline form, it is much easier to test the scope of your content because you can visually locate specific information very easily and then check it against your thesis statement.

Tests Logical Relation of Parts

You have many choices for your topic, and therefore, there are many ways your content can be logically organized. In the example above, we simply listed three main points that were important economic considerations about wind farms. Often the main points of a speech can be arranged into a logical pattern; let’s take a look at some such patterns.

A chronological pattern arranges main ideas in the order events occur. In some instances, reverse order might make sense. For instance, if your topic is archaeology, you might use the reverse order, describing the newest artifacts first.

A cause-and-effect pattern calls on you to describe a specific situation and explain what the effect is. However, most effects have more than one cause. Even dental cavities have multiple causes: genetics, poor nutrition, teeth too tightly spaced, sugar, ineffective brushing, and so on. If you choose a cause-and-effect pattern, make sure you have enough reliable support to do the topic justice.

A biographical pattern is usually chronological. In describing the events of an individual’s life, you will want to choose the three most significant events. Otherwise, the speech will end up as a lengthy and often pointless timeline or bullet-point list. For example, Mark Twain had several clear phases in his life. They include his life as a Mississippi riverboat captain, his success as a world-renowned writer and speaker, and his family life. A simple timeline would present great difficulty in highlighting the relationships between important events. An outline, however, would help you emphasize the key events that contributed to Mark Twain’s extraordinary life.

Although a comparison-contrast pattern appears to dictate just two main points, McCroskey and colleagues explain how a comparison-and-contrast can be structured as a speech with three main points. They say that “you can easily create a third point by giving basic information about what is being compared and what is being contrasted. For example, if you are giving a speech about two different medications, you could start by discussing what the medications’ basic purposes are. Then you could talk about the similarities, and then the differences, between the two medications.”^[1]

Whatever logical pattern you use, if you examine your thesis statement and then look at the three main points in your outline, you should easily be able to see the logical way in which they relate.

Tests Relevance of Supporting Ideas

When you create an outline, you can clearly see that you need supporting evidence for each of your main points. For instance, using the example above, your first main point claims that less land is needed for windmills than for other utilities. Your supporting evidence should be about the amount of acreage required for a windmill and the amount of acreage required for other energy generation sites, such as nuclear power plants or hydroelectric generators. Your sources should come from experts in economics, economic development, or engineering. The evidence might even be expert opinion but not the opinions of ordinary people. The expert opinion will provide stronger support for your point.

Similarly, your second point claims that once a wind turbine is in place, there is virtually no maintenance cost. Your supporting evidence should show how much annual maintenance for a windmill costs and what the costs are for other energy plants. If you used a comparison with nuclear plants to support your first main point, you should do so again for the sake of consistency. It becomes very clear, then, that the third main point about the amount of electricity and its profitability needs authoritative references to compare it to the profit from energy generated at a nuclear power plant. In this third main point, you should make use of just a few well-selected statistics from authoritative sources to show the effectiveness of wind farms compared to the other energy sources you’ve cited.

Where do you find the kind of information you would need to support these main points? A reference librarian can quickly guide you to authoritative statistics manuals and help you make use of them.

An important step you will notice is that the full-sentence outline includes its authoritative sources within the text. This is a major departure from the way you’ve learned to write a research paper. In the research paper, you can add that information to the end of a sentence, leaving the reader to turn to the last page for a fuller citation. In a speech, however, your listeners can’t do that. From the beginning of the supporting point, you need to fully cite your source so your audience can assess its importance.

Because this is such a profound change from the academic habits that you’re probably used to, you will have to make a concerted effort to overcome the habits of the past and provide the information your listeners need when they need it.

Tests the Balance and Proportion of the Speech

Part of the value of writing a full-sentence outline is the visual space you use for each of your main points. Is each main point of approximately the same importance? Does each main point have the same number of supporting points? If you find that one of your main points has eight supporting points while the others only have three each, you have two choices: either choose the best three from the eight supporting points or strengthen the authoritative support for your other two main points.

Remember that you should use the best supporting evidence you can find even if it means investing more time in your search for knowledge.

Serves As Notes During The Speech

Although we recommend writing a full-sentence outline during the speech preparation phase, you should also create a shortened outline that you can use as notes allowing for a strong delivery. If you were to use the full-sentence outline when delivering your speech, you would do a great deal of reading, which would limit your ability to give eye contact and use gestures, hurting your connection with your audience. For this reason, we recommend writing a short-phrase outline on 4 × 6 notecards to use when you deliver your speech. The good news is that your three main points suggest how you should prepare your notecards.

Your first 4×6 notecard can contain your thesis statement and other keywords and phrases that will help you present your introduction. Your second card can contain your first main point, together with keywords and phrases to act as a map to follow as you present. If your first main point has an exact quotation you plan to present, you can include that on your card. Your third notecard should be related to your second main point, your fourth card should be about your third main point, your fifth card should be related to your conclusion, and your sixth card should have any longer direct quotations. In this way, your six notecards follow the very same organizational pattern as your full outline. In the next section, we will explore more fully how to create a speaking outline.

Working Outline

A working outline is an outline you use for developing your speech. It undergoes many changes on its way to completion. This is the outline where you lay out the basic structure of your speech. You must have a general and specific purpose; an introduction, including a grabber; and a concrete, specific thesis statement and preview. You also need three main points, a conclusion, and a list of references.

One strategy for beginning your working outline is to begin by typing in your labels for each of the elements. Later, you can fill in the content.

When you look ahead to the full-sentence outline, you will notice that each of the three main points moves from the general to the particular. Specifically, each main point is a claim, followed by particular information that supports that claim so that the audience will perceive its validity. For example, for a speech about coal mining safety, your first main point might focus on the idea that coal mining is a hazardous occupation. You might begin by making a very general claim, such as “Coal mining is one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States,” and then become more specific by providing statistics, authoritative quotations, or examples to support your primary claim.

A working outline allows you to work out the kinks in your message. For instance, let’s say you’ve made the claim that coal mining is a hazardous occupation but you cannot find authoritative evidence as support. Now you must reexamine that main point to assess its validity. You might have to change that main point in order to be able to support it. If you do so, however, you must make sure the new main point is a logical part of the thesis statement, three main points, conclusion sequence.

The working outline shouldn’t be thought of a “rough copy,” but as a careful step in the development of your message. It will take time to develop. Here is an example of a working outline:

Name: Anomaly May McGillicuddy

Topic: Smart dust

General Purpose: To inform

Specific Purpose: To inform a group of science students about the potential of smart dust

Main Ideas:

Smart dust is an assembly of microcomputers.

Smart dust can be used by the military—no, no—smart dust could be an enormous asset in covert military operations. (That’s better because it is more clear and precise.)

Smart dust could also have applications to daily life.

Introduction: (Grabber) (fill in later)

(Thesis Statement) Thus far, researchers hypothesize that smart dust could be used for everything from tracking patients in hospitals to early warnings of natural disasters and defending against bioterrorism.

(Preview) Today, I’m going to explain what smart dust is and the various applications smart dust has in the near future. To help us understand the small of it all, we will first examine what smart dust is and how it works. We will then examine some military applications of smart dust. And we will end by discussing some nonmilitary applications of smart dust.

(Transition) (fill in later)

Main Point I: Dr. Kris Pister, a professor in the robotics lab at the University of California at Berkeley, originally conceived the idea of smart dust in 1998 as part of a project funded by the DARPA.

A. (supporting point)

B. (supporting point)

(Transition) (fill in later)

Main Point II: Because smart dust was originally conceptualized under a grant from DARPA, military uses of smart dust have been widely theorized and examined.

A. (supporting point)

B. (supporting point)

(Transition) (fill in later)

Main Point III: According to the smart dust project website, smart dust could quickly become a common part of our daily lives.

A. (supporting point)

B. (supporting point)

(Transition) (fill in later)

Conclusion: (Bring your message “full circle” and create a psychologically satisfying closure.)

This stage of preparation turns out to be a good place to go back and examine whether all the main points are directly related to the thesis statement and to each other. If so, your message has a strong potential for unity of focus. But if the relationship of one of the main points is weak, this is the time to strengthen it. It will be more difficult later for two reasons: first, the sheer amount of text on your pages will make the visual task more difficult, and second, it becomes increasingly difficult to change things in which you have a large investment in time and thought.

You can see that this working outline can lay a strong foundation for the rest of your message. Its organization is visually apparent. Once you are confident in the internal unity of your basic message, you can begin filling in the supporting points in descending detail—that is, from the general (main points) to the particular (supporting points) and then to greater detail. The outline makes it visually apparent where information fits. You only need to assess your supporting points to be sure they’re authoritative and directly relevant to the main points they should support.

Sometimes transitions seem troublesome, and that’s not surprising. We often omit them when we have informal conversations. Our conversation partners understand what we mean because of our gestures and vocal strategies. However, others might not understand what we mean, but think they do, and so we might never know whether they understood us. Even when we include transitions, we don’t generally identify them as transitions. In a speech, however, we need to use effective transitions as a gateway from one main point to the next. The listener needs to know when a speaker is moving from one main point to the next.

In the next type of outline, the full-sentence outline, take a look at the transitions and see how they make the listener aware of the shifting focus to the next main point.

Full-Sentence Outline

Your full-sentence outline should contain full sentences only. There are several reasons why this kind of outline is important. First, you have a full plan of everything you intend to say to your audience, so that you will not have to struggle with wordings or examples. Second, you have a clear idea of how much time it will take to present your speech. Third, it contributes a fundamental ingredient of good preparation, part of your ethical responsibility to your audience. This is how a full-sentence outline looks:

Name: Anomaly May McGillicuddy

General Purpose: To inform

Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the current state, applications, and challenges of smart dust technology.

Central Idea: Smart dust technology, while promising for revolutionizing multiple sectors, faces significant technical, economic, and societal challenges that must be addressed for its widespread adoption.

INTRODUCTION

I. Attention Getter

A. In 2002, the acclaimed science fiction writer, Michael Crichton, released his book Prey, which depicted a swarm of solar-powered, self-sufficient, and intelligent nano-machines that worked together to overtake and kill their prey.

B. While a work of fiction, the technological underpinnings for such a scenario are increasingly moving from science fiction to science fact, particularly with the advent of “smart dust.”

II. Statement of Purpose

A. The concept of smart dust emerged in the late 1990s from the University of California, Berkeley, where pioneering researchers Kris Pister, Joe Kahn, and Bernhard Boser proposed a system composed of millions of miniature sensors designed to continuously monitor their environment, communicate, and exchange information.

B. According to Kahn and colleagues in a 2000 article titled “Emerging Challenges: Mobile Networking for ‘Smart Dust'” published in the Journal of Communications and Networks, this foundational idea envisioned devices so small they could theoretically float in the air like dust particles, operating autonomously for years without human intervention.

III. Espousal of Credibility

A. At its core, smart dust refers to incredibly small Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, that function primarily as sensors within wireless networks.

B. According to Nkolika Nwazor and Otelemate Horsfall in a 2022 article titled “Smart Dust Tech” published in the Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, these sophisticated particles integrate sensing capabilities, microprocessors for data processing, wireless communication modules, and power sources.

IV. Thesis and Preview

A. Today, I will provide a comprehensive overview of smart dust technology as we approach 2025.

B. To help us understand this emerging technology, we will first define smart dust and examine its basic components, then explore the diverse applications of smart dust across various sectors, and finally discuss the technical, economic, and societal challenges that may limit its widespread adoption.

[Transition: Let’s begin by exploring what exactly smart dust is and how it works.]

BODY

I. Smart dust consists of microscopic sensing devices that combine sensors, computing ability, and communication capabilities in extremely small packages.

A. Dr. Kris Pister, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, originally conceived the idea of smart dust in 1998, as part of a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

1. According to Warneke and colleagues in a 2001 article titled “Smart Dust: Communicating with a Cubic-Millimeter Computer” published in Computer, Pister’s goal was to build a device that contained a built-in sensor, communication device, and a small computer that could be integrated into a cubic millimeter package.

2. For a sense of scale, a single grain of rice has a volume of approximately five cubic millimeters, and each individual piece of dust, called a mote, would then have the ability to interact with other motes and supercomputers.

[VISUAL AID 1: Size Comparison Display – showing smart dust motes compared to everyday objects like a grain of rice, pinhead, and human hair]

B. The development of smart dust technology has been incremental despite the ambitious original vision.

1. According to Filipović and colleagues in a 2024 article titled “Smart Dust Technology: Convergence of Virtual and Physical” published in the Proceedings of PaKSoM 2024, the early concept articulated a vision of pervasive deployments, with “millions of miniature sensors continuously sensing, smelling, seeing, and hearing.”

2. While the original project aimed for a cubic millimeter device by 2001, current devices are more commonly described as “cubic millimeter or smaller,” according to Nwazor and Horsfall in a 2022 article titled “Smart Dust Tech” published in the Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, with practical hurdles related to power supply, communication range, and complex computation at such minute dimensions remaining substantial.

[VISUAL AID 2: Smart Dust Component Diagram – showing the internal components of a typical smart dust mote including sensors, microprocessor, communication module, power source, and protective casing]

[Transition: Now that we understand what smart dust is, let’s explore its diverse applications across multiple sectors.]

II. Smart dust has the potential to revolutionize numerous sectors through its microscopic sensing and communication capabilities.

A. In the healthcare sector, smart dust enables unprecedented monitoring and diagnostic capabilities.

1. According to Panagiotis Kassanos and Emmanouel Hourdakis in a 2025 article titled “Implantable Passive Sensors for Biomedical Applications” published in Sensors, implantable and ingestible sensors can continuously monitor a wide range of physiological parameters, including glucose levels, heart rate, and blood pressure, enabling continuous, real-time health monitoring that potentially replaces more invasive procedures.

2. The broader concept of the “Internet of Bio-Nano Things,” or IoBNT, represents an emerging frontier, integrating biological and nanoscale systems directly into the Internet, according to Filipović and colleagues in a 2024 article titled “Smart Dust Technology: Convergence of Virtual and Physical” published in the Proceedings of PaKSoM 2024.

B. Environmental monitoring and smart cities benefit significantly from smart dust networks.

1. Nwazor and Horsfall in their aforementioned 2022 article noted that in precision agriculture, smart dust sensors can monitor crucial parameters such as soil moisture and nutrient levels, enabling farmers to optimize irrigation and fertilization.

2. For urban infrastructure, motes can monitor the structural health of buildings and bridges, detecting early signs of damage, while continuously monitoring air and water quality and detecting pollutants.

C. Military and defense sectors represent significant application areas for smart dust.

1. Nwazor and Horsfall have also explained that defense agencies are actively researching smart dust for covert surveillance and reconnaissance, deploying particles in hostile or inaccessible environments to gather tactical data.

2. In industrial automation and logistics, smart dust sensors are revolutionizing operations by being embedded in machinery to monitor parameters like temperature, pressure, and vibrations, enabling predictive maintenance and preventing system failures.

[Transition: While smart dust offers tremendous potential benefits across multiple sectors, it also faces significant challenges that must be addressed.]

III. Despite its transformative potential, smart dust technology faces several technical, economic, and societal hurdles.

A. Battery life and power management remain fundamental constraints for smart dust technology.

1. The extremely small size of smart dust devices severely limits the space available for large batteries, creating significant power challenges.

2. According to Mahmoud Al Ahmad and colleagues in their 2024 article titled “Enhanced RF Energy Harvesting System Utilizing Piezoelectric Transformer” published in Sensors, while energy harvesting techniques, such as those converting ambient radio frequency signals into electrical power, show promise, their effectiveness often depends on environmental conditions.

B. Communication challenges and processing limitations present significant technical hurdles.

1. According to Ketshabetswe and colleagues in a 2019 article titled “Communication Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey and Comparison” published in Heliyon, radio frequency communication typically requires relatively large antennas and consumes substantial power, while optical communication offers energy advantages but necessitates a clear line-of-sight.

2. The diminutive size of the sensors inherently limits their on-board processing power, creating computational constraints in practical applications.

C. Ethical, privacy, and governance concerns represent critical societal challenges for smart dust technology.

1. According to Filipović and colleagues in their previously discussed 2024 article explained that the increasing interconnection of computer systems and networks has blurred the boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds, rendering conventional governance mechanisms largely ineffective.

2. According to Sloane and colleagues in a 2025 article titled “Materiality and Risk in the Age of Pervasive AI Sensors” published in Nature Machine Intelligence, protective measures must be put in place preemptively to address potential risks and inequities, including the implementation of strict privacy laws and robust security protocols, which was previously described by Garcia-Morchon and colleagues in their 2009 article titled “Security for Pervasive Medical Sensor Networks” published in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies.

[Transition: Having explored the components, applications, and challenges of smart dust technology, we can now see that this technology presents both tremendous opportunities and significant concerns.]

CONCLUSION

I. Review of Main Points

A. We have explored the concept of smart dust by first discussing its components, examining the array of applications smart dust has in society, and exploring the challenges to smart dust’s widespread adoption.

B. As we have seen, smart dust technology, while promising, faces hurdles, including power management, communication limitations, and ethical concerns.

II. Concluding Device

A. Ultimately, the future of smart dust requires a delicate balance between innovation and responsibility.

B. To unlock its immense potential for societal benefit, a holistic approach is paramount, necessitating the development of anticipatory, inclusive, and resilient governance frameworks that prioritize privacy by design and ensure environmental responsibility.

C. We began today’s discussion with a scenario straight out of science fiction: swarms of self-replicating nanomachines. While that reality may be decades away, or may never come to pass, the core concepts explored in that fictional scenario – miniaturized, networked devices with the potential to transform our world – are becoming increasingly real.

REFERENCES

Al Ahmad, M. (2024). Enhanced RF energy harvesting system utilizing piezoelectric transformer. Sensors, 24(22), Article 7111. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24227111

Crichton, M. (2002). Prey. HarperCollins.

Filipović, A. M., Bjelajac, Ž., & Stošić. L. (2024). Smart dust technology: Convergence of virtual and physical. In M. Stanković & V. Nikolić (Eds.), Proceedings: PaKSoM 2024, 6th virtual international conference path to a knowledge society-managing risks and innovation (pp. 127–134). Complex System Research Centre; Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Garcia-Morchon, O., Gurtov, A., & Pister, K. S. J. (2009). Security for pervasive medical sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies (UBICOMM 2009) (pp. 378–383). IEEE.

Kahn, J. M., Katz, R. H., & Pister, K. S. J. (2000). Emerging challenges: Mobile networking for “smart dust.” Journal of Communications and Networks, 2(3), 188–196. https://doi.org/10.1109/JCN.2000.6596708

Kassanos, P., & Hourdakis, E. (2025). Implantable passive sensors for biomedical applications. Sensors, 25(1), Article 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25010133

Ketshabetswe, L. K., Zungeru, A. M., Mangwala, M., Chuma, J., & Sigweni, B. (2019). Communication protocols for wireless sensor networks: a survey and comparison. Heliyon, 5(5), e01591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01591

Nwazor, N. O., & Horsfall, O. M. (2022). Smart dust tech. Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, 9(1), 109–115.

Piasecki, S., & Chen, J. (2022). Complying with the GDPR when vulnerable people use smart devices. International Data Privacy Law, 12(2), 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipac001

Sloane, M., Moss, E., Kennedy, S., Stewart, M., Warden, P., Plancher, B., & Reddi, V. J. (2025). Materiality and risk in the age of pervasive ai sensors. Nature Machine Intelligence, 7(3), 334–345. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-025-01017-7

Warneke, B., Last, M., Liebowitz, B., & Pister, K. S. J. (2001). Smart dust: Communicating with a cubic-millimeter computer. Computer, 34(1), 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.895117

VISUAL AIDS

Size Comparison Display: A physical or digital visualization showing the actual size of smart dust motes compared to everyday objects. This could include:

• A grain of rice (5 cubic mm)
• A pinhead
• A human hair width
• A dust particle With actual smart dust mote size (1 cubic mm or smaller) highlighted to demonstrate the truly microscopic scale.

Smart Dust Component Diagram: An exploded view showing the internal components of a typical smart dust mote:

• Sensors (temperature, light, vibration, etc.)
• Microprocessor/computing unit
• Communication module
• Power source/energy harvesting mechanism
• Protective casing

When you prepare your full-sentence outline carefully, it may take as much as 1 ½ hours to complete the first part of the outline from your name at the top through the introduction. When you’ve completed that part, take a break and do something else. When you return to the outline, you should be able to complete your draft in another 1 ½ hours. After that, you only need to do a detailed check for completeness, accuracy, relevance, balance, omitted words, and consistency. If you find errors, instead of being frustrated, be glad you can catch these errors before you’re standing up in front of your audience.

You will notice that the various parts of your speech, for instance, the transition and main points, are labeled. There are compelling reasons for these labels. First, as you develop your message, you will sometimes find it necessary to go back and look at your wording in another part of the outline. Your labels help you find particular passages easily. Second, the labels work as a checklist so that you can make sure you’ve included everything you intended to. Third, it helps you prepare your speaking outline.

You’ll also notice the full references at the end of the outline. They match the citations within the outline. Sometimes while preparing a speech, a speaker finds it important to go back to an original source to be sure the message will be accurate. If you type in your references as you develop your speech rather than afterward, they will be a convenience to you if they are complete and accurate.

Don’t think of the references as busywork or drudgery. Although they’re more time-consuming than text, they are good practice for the more advanced academic work you will do in the immediate future.

We’ve provided you here with a Word document that contains a template for a sentence outline that mirrors the one we used for the Smart Dust Speech.

WORD Document

Google Document (Link will prompt you to make a copy of the Google Document)

Speaking Outline

Your full-sentence outline prepares you to present a clear and well-organized message, but your speaking outline will include far less detail. Whenever possible, you will use key words and phrases, but in some instances, an extended quotation will need to be fully written on your speaking outline.

Resist the temptation to use your full-sentence outline as your speaking outline. The temptation is real for at least two reasons. First, once you feel that you’ve carefully crafted every sequence of words in your speech, you might not want to sacrifice quality when you shift to vocal presentation. Second, if you feel anxiety about how well you will do in front of an audience, you may want to use your full-sentence outline as a “safety net.” In our experience, however, if you have your full-sentence outline with you, you will end up reading, rather than speaking, to your audience. The subject of reading to your audience will be taken up in Chapter 14 on speech delivery. For now, it is enough to know you shouldn’t read, but instead, use carefully prepared notecards.

Your speech has five main components: introduction, main point one, main point two, main point three, and the conclusion. Therefore, we strongly recommend the use of six notecards: one for each of those five components. There are extenuating circumstances that might call for additional cards, but begin with six cards only.

How will six notecards suffice in helping you produce a complete, rich delivery? Why can’t you use the full-sentence outline you labored so hard to write? First, the presence of your full-sentence outline will make it appear that you don’t know the content of your speech. Second, the temptation to read the speech directly from the full-sentence outline is nearly overwhelming; even if you resist this temptation, you will find yourself struggling to remember the words on the page rather than speaking extemporaneously. Third, sheets of paper are noisier and more awkward than cards. Fourth, it’s easier to lose your place using the full outline. Finally, cards just look better. Carefully prepared cards, together with practice, will help you more than you might think.

Plan to use six cards. Use 4×6 cards. The smaller 3 × 5 cards are too small to provide space for a visually organized set of notes. With six cards, you will have one card for the introduction, one card for each of the three main points, and one card for the conclusion. You should number your cards and write on one side only. Numbering is helpful if you happen to drop your cards, and writing on only one side means that the audience is not distracted by your handwritten notes and reminders to yourself while you are speaking. Each card should contain keywords and key phrases but not full sentences.

Some speeches will include direct or extended quotations from expert sources. Some of these quotations might be highly technical or difficult to memorize for other reasons, but they must be presented correctly. This is a circumstance in which you could include an extra card in the sequence of notecards. This is the one time you may read fully from a card. If your quotation is important and the exact wording is crucial, your audience will understand that.

How will notecards be sufficient? When they are carefully written, your practice will reveal that they will work. If, during practice, you find that one of your cards doesn’t work well enough, you can rewrite that card.

Using a set of carefully prepared, sparingly worded cards will help you resist the temptation to rely on overhead transparencies or PowerPoint slides to get you through the presentation. Although they will never provide the exact word sequence of your full-sentence outline, they should keep you organized during the speech.

The “trick” to selecting the phrases and quotations for your cards is to identify the labels that will trigger a recall sequence. For instance, if the phrase “more science fact” brings to mind the connection to science fiction and the differences between the real developments and the fictive events of Crichton’s novel Prey, that phrase on your card will support you through a fairly extended part of your introduction.

You must discover what works for you and then select those words that tend to jog your recall. Having identified what works, make a preliminary set of no more than six cards written on one side only, and practice with them. Revise and refine them as you would an outline.

The following is a hypothetical set of cards for the smart dust speech:

Using a set of cards similar to this could help you get through an impressive set of specialized information. But what if you lose your place during a speech? With a set of cards, it will take less time to refind it than with a full-sentence outline. You will not be rustling sheets of paper, and because your cards are written on one side only, you can keep them in order without flipping them back and forth to check both sides.

What if you go blank? Take a few seconds to recall what you’ve said and how it leads to your next points. There may be several seconds of silence in the middle of your speech, and it may seem like minutes to you, but you can regain your footing most easily with a small set of well-prepared cards.

Under no circumstances should you ever attempt to put your entire speech on cards in little tiny writing. You will end up reading a sequence of words to your audience instead of telling them your message.

Singularity

For the sake of clarity, make sure your thesis statement expresses one idea only. Only in this way will it be optimally useful to you as you build your outline. If you have narrowed your topic skillfully, you can readily focus the thesis statement as one central point. For instance, if you have a thesis statement that says the Second Amendment protects gun ownership rights but most people are unaware of the responsibility involved, you have a thesis statement focusing on two different issues. Which focus will you follow? It’s crucial to choose just one, saving the other perhaps for a different speech.

The same holds true for your three main points: they should each express one clear idea. For the sake of your audience, maintain clarity. If many different ideas are required in order to build a complete message, you can handle them in separate sentences with the use of such transitions as “at the same time,” “alternately,” “in response to that event,” or some other transition that clarifies the relationship between two separate ideas.

Consistency

The entire point of framing a thesis with one clear focus is to help you maintain consistency throughout your speech. Beyond the grammatical requirements of subject-verb agreement, you will want to maintain a consistent approach. For instance, unless your speech has a chronological structure that begins in the past and ends in the future, you should choose a tense, past or present, to use throughout the speech. Similarly, you should choose language and use it consistently. For instance, use humanity instead of mankind or humans, and use that term throughout.

Similarly, define your terms and use those terms only to designate the meanings in your definition. To do otherwise could result in equivocation and confusion. For instance, if you use the word “right” in two or three different senses, you should change your language. The word “right” can be applicable to your right to a good education; the ethical difference between right and wrong; and the status of a statement as right, or accurate and correct. By the same token, in a health care setting, saying that a medical test had a positive outcome can be confusing. Does the patient test positive for the presence of disease, or does the test reveal some good news? If you find yourself using the same word to mean different things, you will need to spend extra time in your speech explaining these meanings very clearly—or avoid the problem by making other word choices.

Adequacy

To make sure your audience will understand your speech, you must set aside the assumption that what is obvious to you is also obvious to your audience. Therefore, pay attention to adequacy in two ways: definitions of terms and support for your main points.

You should use concrete language as much as you can. For instance, if you use the word “community,” you’re using an abstract term that can mean many things. You might be referring to a suburban neighborhood; to a cultural group, such as the Jewish community; to an institutional setting that includes an academic community; or to a general sense of overarching mainstream community standards for what materials should or should not be broadcast on television, for instance. You may not find any definition of “community” that conveys your meaning. Therefore, you will need to define for your audience what you mean by “community.”

Adequacy is also a concern when you use evidence to support your main points. Evidence of the right kind and the right weight are needed. For instance, if you make a substantial claim, such as a claim that all printed news sources will be obsolete within ten years, you need expert sources. This means you need at least two well-known experts from the institutions that provide news (newspapers, television news, or news radio). They should be credible sources, not sources with extreme views whose contact with reality is questioned. This will give you the right kind of evidence, and a large enough amount of evidence.

Uniformity

A full-sentence outline readily shows whether you are giving “equal time” to each of your three main points. For example, are you providing three pieces of evidence to support each main point? It should also show whether each main point is directly related to the thesis statement.

Parallelism

Parallelism refers to the idea that the three main points follow the same structure or make use of the same kind of language. For instance, in the sample outline we used previously, you see that each of the main points emphasizes the topic, smart dust.

Parallelism also allows you to check for inconsistencies and self-contradictory statements. For instance, does anything within main point two contradict anything in main point one? Examining your text for this purpose can strengthen the clarity of your message. For instance, if in main point one you claim that computer crime leaves an electronic trail, but in main point two you claim that hackers often get away with their crimes, you have some explaining to do. If an electronic trail can readily lead to the discovery of the electronic felon, how or why do they get away with it? The answer might be that cybercrime does not fall within the jurisdiction of any law enforcement agency or that the law lags behind technology. Perhaps there are other reasons as well, and you must make sure you don’t leave your audience confused. If you confuse them, you will sound confused, and you will lose credibility. There is no doubt that a full-sentence outline provides the most useful opportunity to examine your message for the details that either clarify or undermine your message.

Finally, your conclusion should do two things. First, it should come “full circle” in order to show the audience that you have covered all the territory you laid out in your preview. Second, it should provide satisfying, decisive, psychological closure. In other words, your audience should know when your speech is over. You should not trail off. You should not have to say, “That’s it.” Your audience should not have to wait to see whether you’re going to say anything else. At the right time, they should feel certain that the speech is over and that they can clap.

Speaking Ethically

George needs to turn in an outline for the speech he is assigned to deliver. The speech itself is two weeks away, but the outline is due today. George has already written the entire speech, and he does not see why he should spend time deleting parts of it to transform it into an outline. He knows exactly what he’s going to say when he gives the speech. Then he discovers that the word-processing program in his computer can create an outline version of a document. Aha! Technology to the rescue! George happily turns in the computer-generated outline, feeling confident that never again will he have to hassle with writing an outline himself.

1. Do you think George’s use of a computer-generated outline fulfills the purpose of creating an outline for a speech? Why or why not?
2. Do you think George’s professor will be able to tell that the outline was created by a word-processing program?

End of Chapter Assessment

1. Joe is beginning to prepare his speech and has constructed a brief outline that sketches out his thesis and main points but does not yet have a fully developed conclusion or transitions. Which type of outline has Joe constructed?

a. speaking outline
b. full-sentence outline
c. opening outline
d. working outline
e. transitory outline

2. Brenda has prepared her speaking outline on a set of six notecards, so she believes she is finished preparing for her speech. You tell her that simply preparing the speaking outline is not enough; she needs to practice using her notecards as well. Why is this the case?

a. She should get used to how the notecards feel in her hand.
b. She needs to make sure the information on the cards will work as a memory cue for her.
c. She needs to know whether her audience prefers white or colored notecards.
d. You think she needs to add more notecards.
e. She needs to memorize all the quotations she is using.

3. Which reason for why we create speech outlines examines the importance of ensuring that each main point clearly represents the thesis statement?

4. Jerry is working on his speech. For his first body point, he has the following in his outline:

I. The length of the necktie is determined by the perfect execution of aligning the tie prior to tying it.

A. A general rule of thumb is to never allow the tie to hang lower than your belt buckle or waist line but also no higher than your navel.

B. The neck tie length is determined using two techniques.

1. First, the tie needs to be aligned by length one side shorter than the other.

2. Second, the shorter length should coincide with the buttons on your shirt to provide an accurate measurement.

What type of outline is Jerry producing?

a. full-sentence outline
b. speaking outline
c. template outline
d. training outline
e. working outline

5. When thinking about the best practices for using outlines, which factor ensures that you are giving “equal time” to each of your three main points?

a. adequacy
b. consistency
c. paralellism
d. singularity
e. uniformity

Answer Key

1. d
2. b
3. b
4. a
5. e