The Art of Sounding Intellegent

[Japher]

Venture Hacks is one of my RSS feeds I actually read on a regular basis, and they have a lot of good stuff even if you aren't wondering how to start your own business. IMO, the type of skills and knowledge that can go into starting your own business are good to have regardless of your endeavours.

A paragraph from an article there I read today was interesting so I thought I would share: Link

This is an interesting thing that I learned a long time back, and I still can’t do it because I just used the word “uh” a moment ago. Get rid of the words “you know,” “like,” “uh,” and “so” from your vocabulary. They just make you sound less confident. They make you sound like you’re less of a good public speaker. The reason you do these things, the reason you go “uh” and “ah” is because your brain is buying time for you to figure out what to say next. It’s a very common thing. So, just learn to pause. It’s OK to pause. You don’t sound dumb because you pause; it adds more gravitas to the situation. But learn to eliminate these words from your vocabulary. This is probably the single best thing you can do to sound more intelligent and persuasive in your life, so this is beyond just presentation.

I noticed recently that a lot of HS kids will say "like" and "so" and "you know" a lot, and that when they went away to college they would comeback and these words seemed to magically disappear from their vocab, "uh" seems to stick around. I don't subscribe the level of intellegence necessarily to the manner of speaking, but it is more-so the confidence of the speaker on the topic as well as the maturity of the speaker (they touch on this in the article). The college kids learn to respect themselves, their education, and the topics on which they chose to speak and thus learn to ditch the pause makers.

I've shedded the cus words, the pause makers, and the and/ors/buts however I still hold onto phrases that fall under euphinisms, colloquialisms, and other colorful phrases that I hope relay charm rather than stupidity. Still, the point of this post is that you don't need to be smart to sound smart (watch out for the fakers - i.e. Ashers), but if you are smart you will get a lot further by sounding smart.

[Drake Tungsten]

Learning to spell "intelligent" and "intelligence" properly also helps with appearances.

[Asher]

I sound intelligent because I sort of, um, knew this.

[Japher]

Learning to spell "intelligent" and "intelligence" properly also helps with appearances.

pish posh

[Provost Harrison]

What's a "euphinism"?

I find using words that exist makes me sound more intelligent

[Drake Tungsten]

I also disagree with the OP. President Obama says "uh" all the time when he's not using a teleprompter, but everyone still thinks he's a genius.

[ZEE]

So how is AAHZ doing?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

They make you sound like you’re less of a good public speaker.

With advice like this, ummm, not so much.

I prefer my gooder speaking ability than what this guy says.

Seriously the guy could have written something along the lines of "a less prepared speaker", "person ill-prepared for extemporaneous speech" or some other way to convey his thoughts. The passage above is more poorer as a result.

[Asher]

Irregardless, it remains goodly advice.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

It could have been more gooderer.

[DaShi]

This thread is quite sad.

[Japher]

DaShi, it is the bestest thread. Your post has been reported

[DaShi]

Damn it!

[MRT144]

There was a guy on the bus who kept saying "You know what I mean". That has the be the worst form of verbal stalling.

[Asher]

A couple guys in the office stutter egregiously.

I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I don't kn-kn-kn-ow.