 You may have seen an awesome video recently that compared speech organization to sloppy joes and BLTs. If you haven't, it's definitely worth a watch. The overall message is that your speech, like a BLT, ought to have clearly defined layers and not run altogether. Doing so means you need to carefully craft your main and supporting points. In this video, we'll discuss some tips for organizing the main points and subordinate points of your speech. Let's start with some general tips for developing main points in your speech. First, you should have somewhere between two and five main points overall. Audiences will have trouble following and retaining more than five main points. If you find that you have more than five, you may need to consider grouping or organizing things a bit differently. For example, let's imagine that you're giving a speech on how to change a car tire. You might determine that there are 16 different steps involved in changing a tire. You don't really want 16 main points, but it's not like you can just leave something like tighten the lug nuts on the tire out of the speech, right? Instead, you can consider grouping those steps under the umbrella of broader main points. You might determine that the first five steps are things you do before you put the car up on the jack. The next seven are things that you do while the car is on the jack. And the last four are things that happen after the car is down off of the jack. Those 16 steps then become sub points, and you have a speech that's easier for the audience to follow and retain. Next, you should think of your main points as sort of mini thesis statements. Each should be a declarative sentence and support the main thesis in some way. You will also want to use parallel construction whenever possible. Aligning language of your main points will help them stand out more for the audience. A speech about adopting a dog, for example, might use parallel wording like, Before adopting a puppy, you should consider the breed. Before adopting a puppy, you should consider the space needs. And before adopting a puppy, you should consider the cost. Your main points should also be balanced within reason. While they don't have to be exactly equal, you don't want one main point that's five minutes long and one that's 20 seconds long. The shorter one doesn't get enough time to be fully developed, and it becomes totally overshadowed by the larger one. If it's important enough to talk about, then find the time. If it's not, then consider getting rid of it. You'll want to be cautious about using the word and in a main point, because it can indicate that you're combining two ideas that should really be separated. Main points should be distinctive and clearly defined. If you find an AND in one of your main points, then carefully consider whether it's truly just one idea or if it's really two things that should be pulled apart. Finally, keep the communication principles of primacy and recency in mind when developing your main points. This essentially means that the audience is most likely to remember what they hear first and what they hear last. As a result, the most critical or important main point of your speech should either come first or last. Once you have your main points well organized, you can consider how to best organize the information that will be supporting each of those items. We have a few simple tips for organizing supporting points as well. First, much like main points, supporting points should be in the form of a declarative sentence. Each supporting point should also work to support the main point to which it is connected. And finally, supporting points should follow the principles of coordination and subordination. The principle of coordination means that your main points, sub points, and sub sub points should be aligned in such a way that they have comparable letter or number designations. Subordination places the supporting points of a given main point under the heading of that point. Coordination and subordination will be discussed more thoroughly as a part of our video on outlining. As you organize your next speech, remember that well-crafted main points and supporting points will keep the structure of your speech from resembling a sloppy joe, where everything runs together in a big mess. Instead, you'll have a tasty BLT with clear and distinct layers and defined separation. In this video, we discussed some tips for organizing the main points and subordinate points of your speech. Check out some of our other videos for more insight into the public speaking process.