The good person speaking well defined the orator in ancient books of rhetorical practice.
"Speaking well" involves the voice, articulation, and language. I remember my son's teacher in grade school teaching spelling while pronouncing "cat" with two syllables.
Many actor's today need to be miked. Certain plays require the best voices. What I heard at a local theatre performance tells me the choices a director has is extremely limited. Actors speaking the dialogue of Shakespeare must be especially sharp in vocal quality, force, and articulation. It was not so, and someone with me said, "I never want you to drag me to a performance of Shakespeare again." (The archaic and metaphoric language was also a problem. Could the essence of Shakespeare survive attempts at a paraphrastic makeover?) The film-television voice does not transfer to the stage.
Furthermore, all the world is a stage. Some terribly poor habits are excused as "colorful" and become bad influences, many people thinking "colorful" is right for themselves. Okay, so long as they are able to shift in and out of the "colorful" gear, having a standard style as well as the deviation. Verbal communication has to exhibit great flexibility, versatility. That can only be cultured with concentrated study to reveal verbal habits and to train in new verbal habits.
(Last updated on February 10, 2006 )