Speechwriting Basics:: For Business & Government

If you want to write for business and government, work in the communications departments of large corporations and government agencies, or in corporate communications in large public relations agencies, you’ll need to know how to write a speech. Business and government leaders, executives and senior managers make dozens of routine speeches and presentations that range from a few words at ceremonial ribbon-cutting occasions, to keynote addresses for business and industry conventions and conferences, awards ceremonies, and dozens of other public events. But to write a speech, you’ll need more than theory and commonplace generalizations. You’ll need to know more than just how to write a newspaper column or magazine feature. You’ll need to see how real-life speeches look and read – how they work. To help you learn, this book includes several whole speeches and numerous excerpts that are intended to illustrate more than a dozen different kinds of typical business and government speechwriting assignments. If you want to know how to take the basic elements of a speech and craft them into a product that serves your company’s or government department’s interests, you need to see examples of speeches as they were assigned and drafted. I’ve spent the last 32 years as a speechwriter (both staff and freelance) for Nortel Networks, assorted other corporate clients, and for the last 10 years, for various ministries at Queen’s Park, including Health & Long-Term Care, Transportation, Trade and Employment, Consumer Services, and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.