 Other people might take forever to heat up their bagel or burn it into a charred mess. But not me. I'm a real toast master. In 1908, an article in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail quoted a local Birmingham preacher named J. H. Jowett, who described a fellow preacher's foolproof method for structuring a sermon. I take my texts and divide my sermon into three parts. In the first part, I tell him what I'm going to tell him. In the second part, well, I tell him. In the third part, I tell him what I've told him. This rhetorical strategy, often called the three T's, is probably familiar to anyone who's been tasked with putting together a presentation or a lecture. It's sometimes framed as the only acceptable strategy for conveying a point to one's audience. That's why John F. Kennedy's entreaty to the American people to support the space program concluded sensibly with, I have described some of the motivations we share in achieving difficult feats of science and engineering. That's why Winston Churchill wrapped up his address to parliament by saying, To reiterate, I have assumed the office of prime minister and I humbly ask for your assistance in the war effort. It's why, when another preacher began one of the most famous and influential speeches of all time, he started it off by saying, I would like to describe the injustice of racial segregation in the United States and my vision for a more unified future. All kidding aside, these speeches may have a different flavor than most university lectures or company presentations, but they are inarguably masterpieces of public speaking, making clear points and arguments, supporting those points with evidence, and lodging them in the memory of each person listening, effecting incredible change in the world as a result. Only the most absurd mental gymnastics could convince you that they take any page from J. H. Jowett's much lauded rhetorical playbook, but they're still powerful and convincing. Of course, not everyone can aspire to those lofty heights in every bit of public speaking, and not every scenario requires that style of rhetoric. Trying to get your sixth grade math class to understand long division probably demands a slightly different strategy than Churchill's wartime address, although I'd certainly love to see an honest effort at such. The popularity of the three T's approach stems from the simple way that it captures a few useful and nearly universal ideas. Encouraging certain virtues in presentation, even if the person who is wielding the strategy is completely inept at public speaking. If you don't have a knack for speech writing, it at least gives you something to go on. Unfortunately, its popularity as a go-to strategy has turned it into a bit of a red flag. Faced with the unique terror of giving a speech, many inexperienced communicators will broadcast their T's, desperately highlighting that they're telling you what they're going to tell you and hoping that you'll recognize and appreciate how closely they're following the rules for a good speech. That frantic reliance on Jowett's formula is the refuge of those who have no other ideas for how to deliver a decent talk, who are hoping that the mystic power of the T's will convey their ideas safely. It's kind of like asking someone on a first date with a dozen roses, a box of chocolates, and a hallmark greeting card. Does it really look like you know what you're doing? Instead of relying on some bit of folk wisdom to make us effective communicators, perhaps we should ask what it is about good public speaking that the three T's are supposed to encourage, while leaning on that framework often produces better results for inexperienced presenters than simply winging it. First and most apparent is the stress on repetition as a means of highlighting key points. Ideally, a speech or lecture should convey your ideas to the widest possible cross-section of your audience, and driving home important takeaways can ensure that a broad range of attention spans and interest levels will at least remember those bits. Repetition can be an effective way to achieve that goal, but using it naively can kill a presentation. It can be patronizing. It can be boring. Perhaps worst of all, it can be redundant in a way that invites an audience to tune out. Why should they hang on every word if half of those words are the same? All of the important speeches I've cited use repetition, but only when it serves the point being made. Martin Luther King repeats, I have a dream, and each time he does, it's a hammer blow, an incessant, pounding reminder of the difference between that noble vision and the reality of the segregated America. JFK's speech invokes the metaphor of explorers enduring hardship in several places, harping on the idea that the United States is a country descended from brave adventurers willing to do anything in the name of discovery, even paying slightly higher taxes. Churchill repeats only two words, victory and survival. The repetition ranges from subtle to avert, from literal to abstract, but it's always used to drive something important home, not as a pleading reminder of what the speech is about. Technical explanation and other sorts of pedagogy benefit from structure, because giving students a framework that they can use to map new information makes it easier to remember. Everyone has had a teacher whose lessons are meandering to the point of being useless, and it's not hard to imagine why the three Ts would be a welcome rule in such situations. At the very least, to tell them what you're going to tell them, you need to know what it is that you're going to tell them ahead of time. The structure of your talk can be part of what makes it interesting and engaging, or, if it's tediously predictable, a great way to lose your audience in places they figure will be unimportant. The Wadsworth constant suggests that the first 30% of any YouTube video can be safely skipped without missing any critical content. Obviously, there are numerous ways of creating structure in a talk, and communicating that structure clearly can make the ideas you're trying to convey stick better. For example, the problem-solution format is a compelling way to frame new information in a memorable fashion. You pose some question, then proceed to answer it, explaining all the tools and facts you're using as you apply them. Not only does this provide a practical context to ground those ideas, it organizes them in a stepwise process of problem-solving and motivates your audience to absorb them. The TV series Mythbusters is rightly credited with teaching a whole generation of kids science without them having any idea that they were learning, simply by invoking a very carefully engineered problem-solution framework for the lessons. Good speeches also have some sort of an arc or rhythm, building and releasing tension in a way that engages the audience and steers their attention to the desired conclusion. The 3Ts approach encourages something like an introduction, development, and summary, a sort of rising and falling progression. Unfortunately, naive communicators often fail to smoothly transition between those sections, blasting their beginning and ending without any connection to the rest of their points. It's rather like writing in a car that's shifting without a clutch, and makes a talk feel less like a cohesive narrative and more like a series of tangentially related statements. My 3 examples of good speeches differ a great deal in length and shape, but they all exhibit masterful control over flow and pacing. JFK's Rice Address is long and has numerous arcs of rising and falling energy, interspersed with jokes to break the tension when the mood gets overly severe. I Have a Dream is charged with a sawtooth of rising tension, granting brief respite only when the subject changes and climaxing in a righteous call to action. Churchill's speech is an incredible study of dry British understatement until its final paragraph, where he states unequivocally that Britain will endure great hardship and must dedicate itself to war or perish. If you're just starting off in rhetoric or speech writing, it's tempting to look for hard and fast rules about how to present your ideas in a compelling way, and these sorts of guidelines can help, but there's also an art to it, something that can't be reduced to a checklist. Trying to cram every presentation into the 3Ts framework doesn't just limit your palette of rhetorical techniques, it's no guarantee that you'll get your point across and may even invite speculation that you're simply following a bit of folk wisdom without any deeper understanding than this is just how things are done. There are useful lessons to be gleaned from its popularity, and you might well find that without explicitly planning anything of the sort, you can map a decent talk to its rules. But it's better to make those decisions deliberately. Have you experienced a painfully naive use of the 3Ts? What are some of your favorite talks or speeches that don't use it at all? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to follow, subscribe, blah, share, and don't stop thunking.