The Rule of Three can make you more persuasive, memorable and entertaining
Part 1: The Rule of Three
Part 2: Improve Your Speech Writing with The Rule of Three
Part 3: The Three Question-Rule
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION is a skill like any other, and the Rule of Three is a simple tool that you can start using immediately to improve your speeches, reports and other communications.
1. Importance
Have you ever listened to an uninspired speech, read a forgettable report, or watched a boring TV advertisement? Thousands of hours, millions of dollars and inestimable amounts of emotional labour were spent preparing these messages; messages which did not inspire, were not memorable and have not changed you for the better (or worse).
When you communicate, you should aim to change your audience in some way: inform them, inspire them, or amuse them. Creating a message with no such impact is much like digging a hole and then filling it in again, a complete waste of time.
Would you like to make an impact, push the world forwards a little, and shake things up? If not, then you needn’t read any further – you might as well spare yourself the effort and go build sandcastles at the beach with all of the other children… but if you would like to change things, the Rule of Three is a simple technique that you can use to help you make your communications more persuasive, memorable and entertaining.
Steve Jobs has used the Rule of Three in all of his presentations dating back to the 1970s.
2. Improve your Speech Writing
You can use the Rule of Three to structure your next speech.
The outline of an effective speech will have three sections: an introduction, body and conclusion. You probably knew this already because this is the same way that we were taught to structure an essay in high school. What you may not have realised is that this structure is based on the Rule of Three: introduction, body and conclusion. The repetition is powerful because it can make your message more persuasive, memorable and entertaining.
Your core message can also be backed with three points. There is something powerful in the way that the Rule of Three allows you to introduce your message, emphasise it, and then make it memorable. If you have more than three supporting points then you can just use your top three. Fewer than 3 points will not give you quite the same amount of punch, and more than 3 risks putting your audience to sleep.
Using the Rule of Three to organise your speech outline and supporting points will give you a speech structure that looks something like this:
- Introduction
- Body:
- Point 1 (e.g. give a supporting point or tell a story that illustrates your point)
- Point 2
- Point 3
- Conclusion
This is such a simple, elegant and effective structure, and you can use it to structure your next speech.
The Rule of Three can also be used at the micro-speech level to create memorable triads of words, phrases and sentences. This technique has been used in famous speeches throughout history. Here are three examples:
- Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar: Mark Antony begins his famous speech with “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.”
- James Lowther, 1st Viscount Ullswater: “There are three golden rules for Parliamentary speakers: Stand up. Speak up. Shut up.”
- Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: Lincoln uses a number of triads in the Gettysburg Address: “We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground”; “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
3. Conclusion
You can use the Rule of Three to help you create speeches with impact. The outline of your speech can be broken into three sections; each of your core messages can be supported by three points; you can also compose memorable triads of words, phrases and sentences.