Calvin Coolidge Speech

Everyone looking at the state of the world right now should be happy and encouraged. Our country is recovering greatly from the World War. However, our lives will be a affected for a long time. We are starting to understand how to recover, and we are applying it. We have already revived business and it looks like we are entering national prosperity. We have gratefully donated to charity and to stop disputes within Europe. Our actions have given courage, hope, and inspiration to people everywhere.

The opening paragraph of President Coolidge’s address contains 196 words. How long is your version?

87 words

How can you account for this gap? Were there large areas of fact missing from your version? Why do you think Coolidge would use so many words to say essentially simple things? What about politicians and public figures in general?

President Coolidge’s address is over one hundred words more than my version. I account for this gap by using smaller words, by shortening every phrase I can, and by completely eliminating words that I don’t need. Coolidge uses many unnecessary adverbs and lengthy phrases with passive verbs. Although my version is less than half the length, most important facts are still in the paragraph but with a decrease in the stress of adverbs and with consolidation of long sentences into shorter ones. Because of this, I was able to avoid having large ares of fact missing from my version. In fact, the only area of detail that I am lacking in comparison to Coolidge’s address is the amount of adverbs.

I think Coolidge used numerous adjectives and adverbs and worthy passive phrases in order to mesmerize the audience with his language and make the speech and text seem intellectual. As this speech was also given to give the audience confidence, lengthy phrases and larger words have a greater effect on the audience. For example,