I'm pleased to introduce Peggy Jordan, who is a new contributing writer at HomeBusinessWiz.com. Peggy has her own home-based business called Working Words, where she offers writing, editing, and marketing consulting services.

As a professional content writer and writing coach, I continually remind myself and my clients to “write like you talk,” meaning: make it genuine and conversational. The classic test of whether a written piece works is to read it out loud and see how it sounds, running it past your ears as well as your eyes.

As a rookie Toastmaster, I’m fast talker who tries to squeeze a lot of material into those 5- to 7-minute speaking slots. I have to work hard on pacing myself, speaking slowly, remembering to breathe, and sticking to my script rather than rambling on and on. And it recently occurred to me that just as “writing like you talk” can bring life to the written word, my fledgling speeches would be much improved if I applied the same techniques to speaking that I use in writing.

White space is important for speeches, as well as documents

Writers make their documents easier to read and understand through the judicious use of what’s known as “white space,” the blank parts of a printed page or Website page. White space between blocks of text rests the eye, gives the reader a chance to assimilate what’s come so far, and alerts them that a new topic or idea is coming up. Think of it as breathing room.

In public speaking, the verbal equivalent of white space is silence. So for this speech, instead of just trying to remember to add pauses, I designed them into the script.

How I did it

After whittling down the first draft into something workable, I formatted it just as I would if it were brochure copy or an article. I gave it a headline and subheadings in bold, contrasting fonts. The opening was its own paragraph; then came white space. My three main points followed in a bulleted list, followed again by several blank lines. Then, each bullet point became a subhead for the information supporting it. After a nice restful helping of more white space, I added the conclusion, again surrounded by its own restful, serene moat of space.

Just looking at it made me relax. Instead of my usual scribbled notes in tiny handwriting all squeezed tightly onto one or two index cards—I had what looked less like a lecture and more like poetry.

Pauses help keep a listener from getting overwhelemed

To practice, at first I read the speech from the page, timing my pauses according to the amount of white space as it came up. Once I had it down somewhat, I moved the page to the floor so that I couldn’t actually read the words but I could still follow the design for cues about where to pause. Amazingly, the same pauses that would help keep a listener from getting overwhelmed or lost were keeping me from getting overwhelmed or lost.

When I delivered the speech, I pictured the clean, spacious clarity of that page in my mind’s eye. I was silent for the white space, emphatic with the headlines (as if I were speaking in bold font), and used body language to convey the indentations and margins.

The best part? I never ran out of breath. Thanks to the white space in my “picture” of the speech, both speaker and audience had room to breathe and time to understand. And thanks to Toastmasters, this writer took another step toward becoming a better speaker.

If you find that your screenshot is too big, follow the instructions below to change the size.

To resize your screenshot in Paint

1. On the Image menu, click Stretch/Skew
2. Type the percentage of the current size that you want (e.g. 50%) in both the Horizontal and the Vertical box
3. If the size is still not what you want, click Edit>Undo and then repeat steps 1 and 2 until you get it the size you want.

To crop your screenshot in Paint

1. On the Image menu, click Attributes.
2. Under Units, click the unit of measurement you want to use for the width and height (inches, centimetres or pixels)
3. Type the measurements in Width and Height.

You can also crop your picture by dragging the image resize handles, located at the lower-right corner and along the bottom and right sides of your picture.

You might need to maximize the window to see the square resize handles. They are a tiny blue box in the very bottom right corner. You'll know you've got them when your cursor turns into a double-ended arrow.

If your current picture is bigger than the new size, the picture is cut from the right side and bottom to fit within the smaller area. If your current picture is smaller than the new size, the extra area is filled with the selected background color.

Or you can use ResizeYourImage.com

ResizeYourImage.com is a free tool that allows you to crop or resize your photos in just a few easy steps.

The site works very simply. You just upload your image in any format (e.g. gif, jpeg, tiff), and then use the buttons on the site to crop, enlarge or decrease it.

When you have the image just the way you want it, press a button, save it back to your computer, and it’s ready to use.

So if it's a screenshot that you want to resize:

1. follow the instructions for making a screenshot
2. save it to your computer
3. go to ResizeYourImage.com
4. upload your image
5. make your changes
6. save the revised image to your computer

(This method works for any image, not just screenshots.)

By the way, you don't have to buy any special software to make screenshots. Your computer already has the cabability to do it quickly and easily. I have instructions here on how to make a basic screenshot.