Page 143 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

134 DELIVERY

repetition in rhetoric is a device that should be encouraged.
Examples:
Pronouns: We told them that he would take one to him, but
she said they gave it to him, before he had a chance to read it.

Specific: Bob and I told the management committee that Dan
would take a copy of the document to Tom, but Alice said the
board gave the proposal to us before Dan had even read the
proposal.
This is an extreme example, perhaps, but it illustrates that important
pronouns can easily get lost. It’s not uncommon, for example, to be
talking about several him’s at once in the same sentence. Great care
should be taken that people always understand exactly whom you
are talking about at all times. I have heard reports of more than one
deal going sour because the listeners misunderstood the pronoun.
Who is he? What exactly is it?
If you are reading a newspaper article, or an e-zine or blog on
your desktop, you can follow the reference pronoun because you
need only track back to the beginning of the sentence to fi nd out
who the he is referring to. But when someone is talking, you have no
way of checking the reference—unless you interrupt that person and
ask, for example, “Which he are you talking about?” Common cour-
tesy would restrain most people from asking that kind of question,
and you may not know that your listeners are already lost.
I remember once when I sat in on one of my daughter’s college
classes, the professor’s command of his subject profited him little in

the face of a daunting barrage of self-inflicted pronouns. He was

describing the similarities between Fascism and Communism, with
Nazis and Blackshirts in the Fascist camp and Leninists and Marx-
ists in the Communist camp—a total of six separate entities. He
paced around the stage talking excitedly about “it,” “that,” “one,”
“them,” and “they.” Individuals melted into “him” and “he.” It soon

became impossible to figure out who was who and what was what.
In the end, after an hour and a quarter and in spite of his enthusi-