Most of us get nervous about making a speech, whether it's to 2000 convention delegates or a PTA meeting at our child's school. Often, though, people find that's the worst part of the whole process - the anticipation. The reality is often a lot easier to handle and can even be quite enjoyable, provided that you take the necessary precaution of doing your homework beforehand - preparation.

There are very, very few people who can get up at a moment's notice and give a good speech totally impromptu and on the spur of the moment. There are plenty of people who think they can and/or who will tell you they can, but the truth is most of them are deluding themselves and boring their audiences to tears.

There are also plenty of speakers who get up and present and make it look easy, as though they hadn't prepared anything beforehand. These are the real experts who, despite having years of speaking experience under their belts, if anything put more effort into preparation than people who speak for ten minutes once a year at the Golf Club dinner dance.

So, what about that preparation? Really, it's about remembering those key golden rules that apply to all good business writing and they are:

1.Define exactly not so much what you want to say, as what you want your speech or talk to achieve - ask yourself, "what do I want the audience to be thinking as I come to the end of my speech?"

2.Find out as much as you can about your audience and ensure your content is very, very relevant to them and their needs.

3.Use language and tone of voice that the audience will understand and identify with - and blend that in with your own natural style of speaking.

4.By all means use a bit of jargon and a few "in" phrases as long as you're certain the audience understands them, but never use jargon others may not know.

The only extra point I would make here is, remember that people can't rewind/replay or re-read you. For that reason you can't expect them to absorb as much detailed information as they would if you were to write it in a document or CD-ROM, which allow them to refer back to details as often as they want.

Knowing your audience is also unusually important here - you'll find out very quickly if you've got it wrong, because you'll see it in their faces and their body language.

Cut the clutter

Depending on the nature of the presentation you're making, sometimes you will be giving out delegate packs or some other form of permanent record of your material, so details, expansions, etc can go in there. Whether you're doing this or not, though, what you say must be clear and uncluttered.

With live speeches, your success is almost entirely dependent on what your audience remembers of what you say. People have very bad memories, and if a speech has been boring or complicated or both, they will remember even less of its content and only recall how terrible it was.

Often senior managers are called upon to give speeches - usually to internal audiences - which cover a wide range of topics, for example a review of the company's performance over the past year, announcements about new developments, etc. These presentations sometimes last for nearly an hour and attempt to cover more topics than a fat Sunday newspaper. At the end of it the audiences have absorbed very little, having been mesmerized by the drone of the boss's voice and an increasingly urgent desire to leave the meeting and go to the washroom.

Yet, argue the senior managers, we have to get all this information over to them at our conference. The answer? Split a one-hour speech down into four fifteen-minuters, interspersed with the other presentations throughout the day or half-day session. (Or if you can't do that, split the one-hour presentation across four different speakers.) Fifteen minutes is much more comfortable for the audience's attention span. And the fact that there are more, shorter presentations creates variety which, to totally misquote an old saying is the spice of live communication.

Start by writing yourself a list of points - a structure. This should cover the usual story-telling technique of a beginning, a middle and an end, although the old soap-box principle of "tell 'em what you're going to say, say it, then tell 'em what you just said" is a bit repetitive. Try if you can to keep the main issues in your presentation to fewer than five, no matter how long your speech is. If you can't actually put it together as a traditional story, what you must do is ensure that one topic leads logically on to the next using some good, workable links.

The right order

It is possible to change direction abruptly in a presentation, but you need to be a practised speaker to pull it off and know how to use your stage body language as well as that other wonderful presenter's tool, silence. Nothing gets an audience's attention faster than a few seconds of total silence when they're expecting a stream of words. All of this carried out by a novice speaker who can't quite get the nuances right, however, can be a disaster.

Links are actually quite useful even if they are a little abrupt, because they act as punctuation to your material. They also tell the audience that we're now moving on to something new. Your links can be as simple as a few words ("now that we're all familiar with the financial background of the new project, let's see how its implementation will affect the company's turnover in the next 12 months.") They can also be several sentences long, but shouldn't be any longer than that otherwise they cease to be links and become short topics in their own right.

Openers and closers

Many people will tell you that a powerful opening and close of a speech are terribly important and in fact as long as those are good you can say pretty well what you like in between. I don't necessarily agree. I've seen (and written for) many speakers who have agonized during several sleepless nights over how to start their speech with a big bang at the company sales conference, when all the time a simple, sometimes gently humorous opening is far easier - and more effective.

It helps here if we re-examine just why openers and closers are important in the first place. To put it politely, they help to locate the audience, to act as a signal that you're about to start talking to them about something interesting or that you've just finished telling them something interesting.

To put it crudely, sometimes the opener at least has to act as an alarm clock - waking the audience up after a narcolepsy-inducing previous speaker - or as air-raid siren, warning the audience to settle down, shut up and pay attention.

But even if the speaker prior to you has been intensely boring and has had the whole audience shifting from one numb seatbone to the other for 45 minutes, you don't necessarily have to go out there in a top hat and false nose riding a unicycle and playing a trombone at the same time. What will get the audience's attention is for you to go out there and be yourself.

Say something amusing, heart-warming, witty, whatever, as long as it's something you would say in "real life." You probably don't want to say something rude about the previous speaker, although it will be tempting, but an in-company joke if it's an in-company audience, or even a relevant quote by a famous person (there are numerous books and websites where you can find quotes) will instantly signal a major change and have the audience looking forward to what you have to say.

The opener and closer don't have to be earth-shattering, but they do have to be part of you and your material. If you're naturally a quiet, private sort of person there's no way you should struggle with a passionate, emotive ending to your speech, even if others think you should be able to carry it off. One very important rule about giving speeches is if you don't think something will work for you on the night, you're right - it won't. Don't be talked into retaining anything you're not comfortable with, because something that's a small hiccup in rehearsals will become a major stumbling block on show day.

On-stage nervousness greatly magnifies any little glitch. If a few, self-effacing words of "thanks for listening" are all you think you will feel comfortable with at the end of your speech then that's what you say, even if you use a speechwriter who tells you otherwise (and some of my colleagues would.)

Spoken speech

Once you have created your structure and decided how best to open and close your speech, the best way to ensure it sounds natural is to switch on an audio recorder, talk through the structure to yourself, and transcribe the recording. (It's a terrible job, but worth it.) Now, edit that transcript and tidy it up a bit, but don't take out the commas and the periods. Long sentences in speeches can leave you gasping for breath and losing the plot. And don't add in anything you wouldn't say in real life.

Spoken speech is simply, only, what it says it is. It is monologue or dialogue as you would speak, not as you would write the same information or thoughts down on paper or screen. All you have to do is forget trying to write out your speech material (or your drama dialogue or narration) and merely say it out loud or in your mind. Then commit those words to paper or screen, a few at a time or in short phrases and sentences.

If it sounds right, it is right, and if it sounds wrong it is wrong even though it may look right on paper or screen.

Even great playwrights interpret spoken speech in exactly the same, uncomplicated way. Where you see their tremendous talent and creative genius is in how they use that simple technique to capture the uniqueness of the characters and scenarios they create. Think Moli