PUBLIC MOVES

Speech classroom often have a speaker’s lectern mounted on a table at the front of the room. Lecterns can seem very formal and can create a barrier between you and your listeners. Therefore, if you are attempting to build identification and good feelings, standing behind the lectern may be inappropriate. Moreover, short people can almost disappear behind a lectern. Because their gestures are hidden from view, their messages lose much of the reinforcing power of body language. For these reasons, when you practice you may wish to experiment with speaking from the side of the lectern or in front of it.
If you plan to use the lectern, place your outline high on its surface so that you do not have to noticeably lower your head to look at it. That way, you reduce the loss of direct eye contact with your listeners. Print your key word outline in large letters that you can read easily with a glance. If you are using note cards, don’t try to hide them or look embarrassed if you need to refer to them. Most listeners probably won’t even notice it when you use them. Remember, your audience is far more interested in what you have to say than in any awkwardness you may feel.

Many years ago before the dawn of the internet age a company dominated the word processing market. Wordperfect was the standard in most businesses that used word processing. Then another powerhouse entered the market in 1995 and there was a significant shift in the business market to Microsoft Office. Quite honestly at that time Microsoft had a little better package available for business and Businesses converted in masses and never looked back. Should they? In the title wave of Microsoft dominance, Wordperfect now owned by Corel has been responding by pushing invasion to make a better product and reducing there price to make an office suite more affordable. Has all of this work been enough to catch up to Microsoft. Well in sales no, but when it comes to the quality and value of the product, I think they have.
I am reasonably adept at Microsoft Office, and personally love the enhancements in Office 2007. I have not used Wordperfect in 10 years, So I thought that I could not give a fair comparison to the products since Corel Wordperfect X3 is so new to me. I was wrong. Within 5 Minutes on Corel Wordperfect X3 I knew I was using a far superior tool than Microsoft Office 2007. I was doing advanced formating of a document with tables, photos, dynamic links, within 20 minutes without even referring to the help menu. I have used Corel Wordperfect X3 for about 4 days and can not ever see me going back to the miserable limitations of Microsoft word. Unfortunately my trial version runs out in about three weeks, and I’ll have to pay for my copy, but with the reasonable price point I have no problem with the change. There ya go Corel your market share just went up .00001% Another small step in the right direction.