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Acronyms and
Abbreviations
A great way to add some humor in your
presentation, that is taught in my
public speaking book, is using acronyms
and abbreviations.
An acronym is where the letters of the
abbreviation form a new word, for example HUD
means the Department of (H)ousing and (U)rban
(D)evelopment. There are plenty of acronyms
and abbreviations that are widely known such
as the IRS and the CIA. You can always
research more acronyms that might be relevant
to your audience.
To make acronyms work the best for your
presentation, try to make it funny by changing
one or more of the words that go with your
well-known abbreviation or acronym.
Here are some examples I have used in my
public speaking book.
IQ Idiot Quotient
CPI Consumers Poorhouse Indicator
IRA Individual Rest-in-Peace Account
TQM Totaled Quality Management
With a little thought and practice of these lessons
from my public speaking
book, it is very easy to customize
acronyms to suit your particular audience. Here are some
examples of acronyms I used at a speaking
engagement for a hotel franchise:
OCC in the hotel business stands for Occupancy
Rate. I changed it to Oh! C'mon Clinton
because at that time certain taxes were being
proposed by President Clinton that would
affect their industry. You must always try to
connect with the audience by mentioning the
topics that are foremost on their minds. This
gives you the greatest chance of succeeding
with something funny, and success with your
audience is an important lesson taught in my
public speaking book.
ADR to the hotel industry means Average Daily
Rate. I changed that to All Dated Rooms which
is something nobody in the hotel business
wants to hear. It would mean a fortune would
be spent on upgrading and modernizing the
rooms.
IOC was the name of the group I was addressing
for a particular presentation (International
Operator's Council). I changed that to I'm
Ordering Chinese and I'm Out of Coffee. These
phrases aren't particularly funny by
themselves, however, these people had just
completed rigorous and exhausting inspections
by the Franchisor. That is what made it funny
to them. Knowing when, where, and what will be
funny is a great skill to master from my public speaking book.
ANA This is one of my all time favorites.
ANA stands for Al Nippon Airlines. I tell the
audience that it's a good thing this company
had an American advisor before they agreed on
this acronym because the original version was
. . . ANAL (this is revealed on an overhead
projector just after a pause following the
word "was").
This ANA versus ANAL story gets great
laughter. I extend the humor with the line,
'How would you like to see that on a 747
coming at you?' This question gets even bigger
laughs from the crowd, and "leave 'em laughing
when you go" is something I teach in my public
speaking book.
For the hotel presentation, the acronyms were
on an overhead transparency and were displayed
using the "reveal technique" taught in my
public speaking book
(where individual overhead lines were covered
until it was time to reveal the funny
version). You don't have to only project
acronyms to use them in your presentation. You
could also print them in your handouts, or
just tell them out loud, almost any method can
be used when utilizing the tools from my
public speaking book.
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