Talk:Public speaking

The content of Orator was merged into Public speaking on 12 August 2025. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

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Text has been copied to or from this article; see the list below. The source pages now serve to provide attribution for the content in the destination pages and must not be deleted as long as the copies exist. For attribution and to access older versions of the copied text, please see the history links below. Copied Oratory (history) → Public speaking Copied Public speaker (history) → Public speaking

This article is substantially duplicated in one or more external publications. Since these publication(s) copied Wikipedia, rather than the reverse, please do not flag this article as a copyright violation of the following source: Surhone, L. M., Timpledon, M. T., & Marseken, S. F. (2010), Orson Scott Card: United States, author, critic, public speaking, activism, genre, Betascript Publishing Additional comments OCLC 636651797, ISBN 9786130336431.

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Update

I've worked on this page for a few weeks now! Here is a summary of the major things I have done:

• I added back previously deleted content. I edited the content and placed under appropriate headings. I think that the article was too heavily skewed towards the history of public speaking without this content.
• I changed the organization of the article. I added new sections so that new content can be added by future editors.
• Most importantly, I created a "modern" section. New content about public speaking can be added here so that the page can grow.
• I edited out original research in the article, especially in the "women and public speaking section." There were inappropriate words such as "brave" and "revolutionary," which made the section sound far too opinionated and unsupported.
• I added links onto the page. I think that adding links to the Rhetoric page and the Famous List of speeches is appropriate and necessary.
• I added this Public speaking page to the See Also sections of similar and relatable pages. I'm hoping that this will generate more traffic to this page.
• I worked on the lead so that it now discusses information that is actually contained within the article.
• I copyedited and revised the grammar and sentence structure of the article.

Here is what can still be worked on:

• Sources absolutely need to be added to the places with the citation needed tag. Specifically, the "women and public speaking section."
• Content should be added in the new sections. There needs to be more information beyond the history of public speaking.
• Content should be added in the modern section. Perhaps the rhetoric page can be a good starting place for also adding relatable content to the page.

--Candles and candy (talk) 04:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

99% useless yet 100% necessary

Oratory redirects here, which is kind of a pity, but what can you do?

The central problem here is that public speaking is often too broad. Just look at the infobox: rhetoric, semiotics, and related ugh.

For my own wiki, I was just now forced to invent a page name "oratory arts" as a subpage of performance art. It's what all the kids—and many others—are doing these days: perfecting their ability to deliver themselves into a camera, usually as a speech activity (as opposed to music, dance or mime, which are other things).

Videography is a complex set of skills to deliver the best image from camera to electronic media.

On the other side of the camera, it's no less involved to spruce yourself up as the "talent" and vent your being (worse still if you're trying to do both at the same time).

This page, public speaking, is hardly a suitable companion for videography as the other half of the vlog partnership.

But my own solution, oratory arts, is hardly going to be added to Wikipedia, so this note of mine is 99% useless.

Nevertheless, it remains a complete mess that we can't carve this content out into a suitable page name with the right public cachet, so as I see it, finding a solution is 100% necessary despite the present crater in the English language around a more apt, specific term.

I spent a couple of hours dredging around in speaking pages, presentation pages, performance pages, on-camera pages (not really much to speak of) and I found nothing at all in the right range.

So now I have my own place to file a YouTube video with the title "Find Your On-Camera Personality" even though en.wiki draws a total blank (modulo me missing something totally obvious, which I consider unlikely at this juncture; if this golden page exists, certainly nothing else apropos links to it from the lead section). — MaxEnt 23:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

History could include broader context

Add subsections to the History section to show history of public speaking in cultures in addition than Greece and China. Zenspirals (talk) 01:52, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ChatGPT possibly detected

seriously, I think it's obvious the opening of the page is made by ChatGPT, I don't think anyone else would type "emphasizes the importance of X in expressing Y". 2001:1A40:1233:C300:6C3F:2A38:D66A:8C7 (talk) 12:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

  Y Merge completed; discussion shows clear support and no opposition; consensus to merge -- Robertjamal12 ~🔔 02:46, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

---

I suggest merging Orator into Public speaking. the article for Orator is a short, Start-class article that i feel could be explained and connected to well better if we merge it here, to be honest. Currently, i feel that having a separate article for someone who takes on the role of a public speaker, while it could be useful, ends up being more redundant in the long run. DM5Pedia ^(ctr) 03:34, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I think it would make more sense if being-an-orator were a position or a job or a thing people are, rather than an activity people do as part of other jobs—an activity that some people are good at. In short, being-an-orator really just means the same thing as doing-public-speaking(-well). Otherwise it’s just WP:DICDEF. — HTGS (talk) 03:26, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead image

Really, the best picture from all of Wikimedia Commons to depict public speaking is that antediluvian photograph of Lincoln, itself requiring a red arrow to guide the eyes? It's good at depicting the crowd for the public aspect, but you can barely see the speaker. I feel a good image for this article shoud depict a large crowd and a speaker—clearly separate entities from each other, while still both being seeable. What I mean by "clearly separate entities" is that you easily know who's giving the speech; it would allow this one of Wakatsuki Reijirō, but wouldn't allow this one of Mahmoud Taleghani.

This picture of Theodore Roosevelt speaking to a crowd would be a better fit. This other picture of Roosevelt could work. This picture of Barack Obama from 2008 could also be better, this one of Ronald Reagan also. We could also do a gallery similar to the lead images of the World War II article, but depicting the same type of thing 3–5 times seems unnecessary. There's this Australian one but I'd prefer a notable figure we could link to. Also this one of Ted Kennedy.

The large crowd rule could be ignored, because this is a beautiful picture of Desmond Tutu and you easily know he's giving a speech.

Personally, I think the Reagan, Reijirō or Tutu pictures would be best fit for the lead image, and could also see the pictures of Roosevelt, Kennedy or Obama being there. Roast (talk) 22:08, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough I had the same thought about a week ago. My first choice was a Martin Luther King photo, though I don’t remember which one. I suppose anything that can link to an article on a specific speech in its caption would be a good choice, so maybe File:Martin Luther King - March on Washington.jpg, for “I Have a Dream”.

I think the Obama photo is great, but I’d really prefer to lean away from modern(-ish) politicians. For my pick from your examples, I would be happy with Wakatsuki at the London Naval Conference or Teddy at Sagamore. Again, I find myself wanting to avoid American politicians, but of all the famous speakers, Americans do represent. — HTGS (talk) 03:19, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add Takasuki soon, but am mid-writing another article (Franz Taibosh, real interesting read when its here). If you want to add Takasuki (or Roosevelt, you choose) in the mean time, you can. Roast (talk) 03:27, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@HTGS nevermind. My webpage crashed and I lost all my progress. I'm genuinely pissed. Roast (talk) 03:54, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no! That sucks. I find Chrome to be much better at bringing back my work-in-progress after a crash than other browsers... not that that helps you much now, I suppose. — HTGS (talk) 03:58, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@HTGS Well I rebuilt it now. Nominating it for DYK too Roast (talk) 06:06, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Likely AI generated text

Hi - I added the AI generated text here because the edits by A.A Ghatge display many indications of possible LLM use. (Some have been revdelled presumably for copyright violations, another common AI problem.) The remaining text needs review for accuracy, source-to-text integrity, original research/synthesis, and the rest of the possible LLM problems. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]