Rule of Three’s – Create a More Powerful Speech

If you want to appeal to your audience, please their minds. To please their minds, utilize three’s within your speech. Three is a magic number. The brain has become an expert at pattern recognition and three is the smallest number that can be used to form a distinguishable pattern. The combination of the pattern along with the shortness of threes can result in memorable presentations.

As Brian Clark, (www.copyblogger.com/rule-of-three) says; “Information presented in groups of three sticks in our heads better than other clusters of items. If you want something stuck in someone’s head, put it in a sequence of three.” Wikipedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org) says: “Having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern. It makes the author or speakers appear knowledgeable while being both simple and catchy.”

If you work with the rule of three’s when preparing a presentation you will definitely have a more powerful presentation. How do you use three’s in preparing and presenting a speech?

• First, break every speech into three parts, an opening, a body and a conclusion.
• Second, organize the body of your speech into three main topics and then support each idea with personal stories, statistics, quotations or analogies.
• Thirdly, add the rule of threes within your speech in the form of the powerful rhetorical device, triads or tricolons. Three repetitions of phrases, words, or sentences. There have been many powerful speakers who have used this rule well. (Malala’s Speech, Smooth Talking, Feb 14, 2014).

For example:

• Winston Churchill: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
• Thomas Jefferson : “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
• Barack Obama: “So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other."

For your next presentation, work with the rule of three’s. You will have a very powerful speech indeed, your audience will remember it, and you’ll be happy. And, that’s my triads for today!

Mary Anthes is a business owner, speaker and a Distinguished Toastmaster. She can be reached at nmanthes@shaw.ca.