Although writing and public speaking are very different arts, it has become acceptable to treat public speaking as the mere reading of a written text. Stage fright is something everybody has to handle in their own way. But academic culture is something we can deliberately change. This article reviews the principles of academic public speaking, in hopes of contributing to the long-term improvement of our norms. In our obsession with persuasive argumentation, academics sometimes forget about the third item on this list.
Some people think it follows automatically from the first two.
Some even scoff at the goal itself. Perversely, we seem to have come to believe that if a talk is entertaining, it's probably not very deep. These attitudes are seriously mistaken. It is impossible to communicate and persuade effectively without entertaining as well. Listening is hard work.