The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• Whether he eventually becomes the 44th presidents of the United States or not, Barack Obama will be remembered as one of our generation’s greatest orators. Understanding what makes him so great can inform those of us who write speeches and remarks for clients. It’s more than his towering physical presence, after all, or the timbre of his voice or merely, as Cole Porter might have said, that he’s “got that thing, that certain thing.” Now Slate.com comes to the rescue with a piece that explores exactly what it is that Obama does that makes his words come so alive. If you can get over the author’s inclusion of the word “consilience” (act of concurring; coincidence; concurrence), it’s worth reading.*

• I once quoted Kurt Vonnegut referring to the semicolon as “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.” The New York Times’ Sam Roberts upped the ante Feb 18 by quoting Vonnegut, as well: “When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life,” said Vonnegut “Old age is more like a semicolon.” In a fantastic story, Roberts reports on the use of a semicolon in a sign he saw in the subway, unusually deft punctuation, he notes, for anything written by the marketing department of the transit system – and one worth taking note of. Read it here.

* By the way, no matter how great an orator a man or woman may be, without a great speechwriter behind him or her, it’s all for naught. Obama’s speechwriter? Twenty-six years-old Jon Favreau, profiled here in January in The New York Times. 26? Now that’s humbling.