The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation : Page 61

In short, if you realize that good rhetoric demands that you be specific, a more sparkling personality will be your reward. To a greater or lesser degree, that goes for all the points of this chapter — subordinating ideas properly, employing figurative turns of expression, taking pride in good usage and pronunciation, and avoiding dictional idiosyncrasies. Conversation is your most continual social activity. Its tool is language — grammar, rhetoric, words. You must determine to handle all three as well as you can. The mere will to do so — the steady interest in those matters — will in itself go a long way toward making you talk so that others will like to hear you. These matters, along with those to follow, will make people not only like to hear you talk, but like to hear you talk even more than they like to hear themselves talk.