al audience it will
interest your readers. Naturally, mere oratorical trivialities must not
be mistaken for striking statements.

When you get back to the office to write up the report of the speech you
will feel the need of direct quotations--in fact, the length of your
report will be determined by the number of direct quotations that you
have to use in it--as well as by editorial dictum. It would be entirely
wrong to quote any expressions of your own because they are somewhat
like the speaker's statements, and it is impossible to quote anything
less than a complete sentence in the report of a speech. Hence you will
need complete sentences taken down verbatim in the exact words of the
speaker. Make it a point to get complete sentences as you listen to the
speech. Whenever a striking statement or an interesting part of the
speech seems worth putting in your story get it down completely. You
will find yourself writing most of the time because, while you are
writing down one important sentence, the speaker will be uttering
several more in explanation and may say something else of interest
before you have finished writing down his first statement. Strict
attention, a quick pencil, and a good memory are needed for this kind of
work, but the reporting of speeches will lose its terrors after you have
had a very small amount of practice.

Just as any news story begins with a lead and plays up its most striking
fact in the first line, the report of a speech usually begins with the
speaker's most striking or most important statement. As you are
listening to his words watch for something striking for the
lead--something that will catch the reader's eye and interest him. But
you must exercise great care in selecting the statement for the lead.
Theoretically and practically it must be something in strict accordance
with the entire content of the speech and, if possible, it should be the
one statement that sums up the whole speech in the most concise way.
Somewhere in the discourse, at the beginning, at the end, or in some
emphatic place, the speaker will usually sum up his complete ideas on
the subject in a striking, concise way. Watch for this summary and get
it down for the lead. However, there may be times when this summary,
though concise, will be of little interest to the average reader and you
will be forced to use some other striking statement. Then it is
perfectly permissible to take any striking statement in the speech an