Smart Start A La Carte

Welcome to Smart Start À La Carte. This is your à la carte path to linguistic excellence. Each edition includes an impressive array of ways to make an impression. Some are simple specific spoon-fed examples that you can slide into your daily dialog. Some are a description or definition of a pattern, concept or category of persuasive communication with an example, of course.

Goofy | I don’t know of a top sales person that doesn’t have a great sense of humor. Mainly, I think, because I would avoid them to begin with. A sense of humor comes in real Handy. Especially, when laughing off rejection. In How to Get Common Ground, I talk about one easy way into humor. And, it’s the same thing that Keith Cronin calls the language of the cinema.

Basically, him and I put out the idea of quoting movies. Particularly funny ones, at that. We both basically invented doing this. How funny is that?

But, seriously, folks, there is a saying that if you can make a girl laugh, you can get her to do just about anything. The same is true for persuasion, influence and their application…sales.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can get her to do just about anything.

Now, I’m not going to go into the specifics of the exceptions to this rule, you get the point.

If you aren’t funny, and most of you aren’t, then you’re screwed, basically. But, you can still become more funny than you already are. For some of you, this is as simple as staying silent during moments you’d normally say something and immediately afterward notice you lost them. Lost in translation, I guess.

For those of us capable of learning, pick up Comedy Writing Secrets, The Comedy Bible, and any book in the comedy writing section of Amazon.com.

If all else fails and you can’t become well-read, watch a bunch of movies and become well-watched.

And, now for a 2nd helping. Open wide.

Greek Figure of Speech | paraprosdokian: I’m about to let you in on the biggest secret I have…not. Why would I do that? I don’t know either. Get a clue.

Groucho Marx was pretty good at this pattern…according to Wikipedia, anyway.

“She got her good looks from her father, he’s a plastic surgeon.” — Groucho Marx

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” — Groucho Marx

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.” — Groucho Marx

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

For More examples and the definition, read Grace O’Connell’s Paraprosdokian and Graden Path Sentences or Michael Hacker’s Paraprosdokian. If you still don’t get it, read Heather Hollick’s Shoeless Paraprosdokian.

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Not exactly biased source of quotes:

“It’s too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.” — Jack Handey

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes, that way when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.” — Jack Handey

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.” — Jack Handey

“On the other hand, we have different fingers.” — Jack Handey

“The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.” — Jack Handey

“Whenever you read a good book, it’s like the author is right there in the room talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books.” — Jack Handey

“Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.” — Jack Handey

“Broken promises don’t upset me. I just think, why did they believe me?” — Jack Handey

“I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children’s children, because I don’t think children should be having sex.” — Jack Handey

Here’s how to keep us separate. It’s Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey. It’s shallow thoughts by Jade Handy. -Jade Handy

Photo Credit: By margolove Margo Conner on Flickr