Making Good Talk: How to Improve Your Conversation

THIS book is based on the assumption that, since conversation is life's most participated habit, any, even a slight, improvement in it is a large social, economic, and moral value. It’s not that everyone can become a brilliant conversationalist, but that everyone can get better in this matter of talking, and should.
The output of talk in the world is staggering. It is estimated that a person talks about 30,000 words a day. That means that you talk the equivalent in words of two lending library novels a week. It means that you impose that number of words a week on your family, friends, and associates. It also means that during the time they listened to you, they could have read two good novels. Were you making an honest effort to give them their word’s worth?
In short, it seems true to say that conversation is the most complete single expression of one's personality. It is the mirror of a person's and a group's and a country's sum total of decency, knowledge, and culture, their explicit, composite character.
Hence, it is the duty and the lifelong job of everyone to keep raising its tone and liveliness in himself and in his community. Within the boundaries of one's intelligence, everyone can improve his conversation in several ways. He can improve it technically, in grammar and rhetoric, diction and voice; in variety, richness, and liveliness in lovable and good taste, so that whether he talks or listens, people are glad of it, and are better off for his being there.