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Review: The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking Like a Professional.

I was intrigued when I first heard the title The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking Like a Professional. Written by marketing communication consultant and business writing tutor Philip Yaffe, the 288-page book is based on a course on the fundamentals of good writing and speaking given to students who don’t speak English as a first language.  Don’t let the 288 pages stop you from reading it. The Gettysburg Approach is an easy read, divided into three main sections.

• Fundamentals Of Good Writing (55 pages)
• Oral Presentations: Giving Voice To Your Words (43 pages)
• Appendices

The reason for the title is that Yaffe says that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address demonstrates all the principles of clear writing that are described in the book.  If you’re interested, he shows you how in one of the appendices.

Writing Fundamentals

However, I was more interested in the writing advice.  Some of the sections that stood out for me in the writing section included:

• the essentials of a good argument
• the difference between expository and creative writing, and creating the right mindset for each
• the purpose of expository writing
• how to make writing clear and concise (Yaffe gives formulas you can use to remember the principles he outlines)
• building your text, sentence by sentence
• using the inverted pyramid (which happens to be one of my favorite tools to explain article structure)

There are exercises and examples to illustrate each point, as well as an extremely useful summary table on expository writing.

The best quote in this section is:

So what distinguishes professional writers from non‐professional ones? You may be tempted to say “natural talent.” This no doubt plays a role, but only a minor one. The real difference is in how professionals go about their work — their attitudes, methods, practices and procedures.

Advice on Speaking

In the section on better speaking, some of the principles in the first section are repeated to show how these relate to speaking. Yaffe highlights some important differences between written and spoken language and has some interesting tips on using body language to enhance the effectiveness of public speaking and on designing slides.

Finally, the appendices give exercises, analysis and revision of the principles involved. This is a meaty section, but you can pick the areas that interest you most and just work on those.

What I Thought

I enjoyed the book, which was written clearly, with particular interest in the section on writing. Most people could improve their writing using the tips here and it’s written so that anyone can understand and apply the tips.

I leave you with Yaffe’s Law about good writing:

If you give people what they want first, they are  likely to accept anything else you want them to  have. If you give them what you want first,  chances are they won’t accept anything at all.

The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking Like a Professional is available on Amazon.

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