Get to the Point!: Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter

By Joel Schwartzberg

9 min read

Why does it matter? Because the communication problem you've been trying to fix isn't the real problem.

You've been treating communication failure as a delivery problem. The nerves, the rambling that goes nowhere, the moment you lose the room and can't find your way back — you've blamed your voice, your preparation, your anxiety. Every piece of advice you've received has aimed at the symptoms: slow down, make eye contact, open with a hook. None of it fixed anything, because none of it touched the actual cause. Before you opened your mouth, before you even thought about how to say it, you skipped the one thing that makes everything else work: figuring out what you actually believe, specifically and defensibly enough to argue it. You didn't have a topic problem. You had a point problem. And there's a three-part diagnostic that separates the two — fix the point problem, and almost everything else corrects itself.

You Think You Have a Point — You Actually Have a Topic

An 11-year-old in a blue three-piece suit and clip-on tie takes the stage at a forensics tournament. Joel Schwartzberg knows the neutron bomb inside out — the physics, the political debates, the humanitarian stakes. He even has a line ready: he calls it an "explosive" issue. When the speech ends and a judge asks what it was about, Schwartzberg has a crisp, confident answer: "The neutron bomb."

That answer is the problem. He described a topic. He never stated a point.

Schwartzberg spent the next decade competing in forensics, eventually winning a national championship, then spent the decades after that coaching executives, activists, and leaders. The neutron bomb speech stayed with him — not as a cringe memory but as a diagnostic tool — because that same failure shows up everywhere. Talented people, important things to say, and a consistent habit of describing their subject rather than taking a position on it.

The confusion runs deep because topics and points feel identical from the inside. Both require research and preparation. Standing at the podium full of information, you feel like you have something to say. But a topic is an address; a point is a destination. "The neutron bomb" is an address. "The neutron bomb makes us less safe" is a destination. Every word in the speech either pulls toward it or it doesn't.

That's why presentations fail on multiple fronts at once. Without a point, you can't make it land. You can't sell it to a skeptic. You can't hold to it when the room pushes back. The speaker rambles because there's no destination. The speaker gets nervous because somewhere, beneath the information, they sense there's nothing to land on. The ending is forgettable because there was nowhere to arrive. These aren't separate problems; they're symptoms of the same absent root.

The fix is simpler in concept and harder in practice: decide what you believe about your subject and say it. A real point takes a position: something with stakes and direction, a sentence someone could argue with. "The neutron bomb" tells the audience a subject. "The neutron bomb makes us less safe, and here's what we should do about it" gives them a reason to listen.

Most of us have been giving book reports our entire professional lives and calling them presentations. The information was real. The expertise was genuine. The point just never showed up.

Three Tests That Convert Any Vague Subject Into a Claim Worth Defending

Think of your argument as a block of marble. The subject — "income inequality," "our quarterly results," "Facebook's new features" — is the block. A point is the sculpture inside it. Most speakers hand the audience the block and call it a presentation. Schwartzberg's three tests are chisels: not to invent your point, but to release it from the vague material surrounding it.

The first test is grammatical. Can your claim complete "I believe that ___" as a full sentence? "I believe that income inequality" fails: it's a fragment, not a claim. "I believe income inequality is America's biggest domestic challenge" passes. Run this on something you've actually said in a meeting. Watch how many apparent points turn out to be topics in disguise.

The second test is for truisms. Does your claim have a reasonable counterpoint? Can you defend it for longer than a minute? A real point needs friction: someone informed and capable should be able to push back. If nobody could, you're not arguing; you're announcing.

The third test hunts what Schwartzberg calls "badjectives": generic adjectives (great, important, amazing, weak) that feel substantive but carry no actual information. When you reach for one, it signals you stopped asking "Why?" too soon. The fix is mechanical: say your point aloud, ask "Why?", fold the answer into the sentence, delete the adjective.

The NPR pledge drive shows all three in sequence. Take the starting pitch: "You should donate to public radio." It clears the first two tests (grammatically a claim, and someone could reasonably decline) but stalls at the third. Apply "Why?" once: "Donating to public radio is important." That's a badjective in camouflage, sounding meaningful but describing nothing specific. Apply "Why?" again: "It supports quality programming." Again: "Which helps expose vital truths." Drop the scaffolding. The finished claim, "Donating to public radio helps expose vital truths," is a different argument entirely. Not longer. Not more emotional. Just aimed at something real.

The distance between "you should donate" and "helps expose vital truths" isn't eloquence. It's three rounds of "Why?" used as a scalpel. Notice what else happened: each round pushed toward higher stakes. That's the direction the test always points. Take "Our software helps you make smarter financial decisions." It clears the first two tests but stops short of the real argument. Apply "Why?" once and you get fewer bad decisions; apply it again and you get dramatically lower costs. The bigger version is almost always available. Most communicators just stop before they reach it. Audiences don't sit up because a speaker performed better. They sit up because the claim got sharper.

One more trap: don't load two separate claims into one sentence connected by "and." Each dilutes the other. If your point passes all three tests, it stands on its own.

Most Pitches Are Just Book Reports With Better Slides

There are two ways to think about your job as a presenter. A sharer's job is coverage: be thorough, organized, informative, engaging. A seller's job (Schwartzberg's term) is delivery: move the point from your head into theirs. Most workplace pitches run on the first model. They get graded on engagement and still manage to deliver nothing.

Schwartzberg frames the actual job with one image: a bicycle messenger. The messenger's only responsibility is moving the package — the point — from their head to the audience's. Whether the delivery happened is the only measure of success. Applause, laughter, approving nods, people telling you afterward how interesting it was — these measure engagement, not delivery. They're useful feedback for a talk show host. For someone trying to move a decision, they're noise.

Here's what the confusion looks like in practice. A branded-merchandise salesperson walks her client through everything she sells: the hat is adjustable and can be permanently stitched with your logo. She describes it accurately. Then she stops. What she never says — the one sentence her entire pitch exists to deliver — is this: if you work with me, more people see your brand, more people find your product, and you make more money. She handed her client a catalog. She never gave them a reason.

The tells are linguistic. A sharer opens with "Today I want to talk a little about our options" — the word "little" signals that nothing is at stake and nothing will be decided. A seller opens with "Today I'm going to explain why our current approach is losing us customers." That sentence has a destination. Every word after it either pulls toward the landing or doesn't.

Three phrases make this shift almost automatic: I propose, I recommend, I suggest. Each is grammatically incomplete without a real claim attached. That's the point. "I recommend reviewing our options" is still a sharer's sentence; it has no destination. "I recommend we cut the vendor contract" is a seller's sentence; the package is already in motion. You cannot say "I recommend" and then trail into a description. The sentence demands a conclusion.

The bike messenger doesn't earn points for having a nice bike or being charming at the door. The only question is: did the package arrive? Start asking that question about your own presentations, and you'll see how many deliveries you've been marking as successful that never actually got there.

Your Final Syllable Carries More Authority Than Everything You Said Before It

The point is the root. The last syllable of every sentence is where it either grips or slips.

Most people assume content is substance and delivery is packaging (that a strong argument lands regardless of how it's voiced). That assumption is half right and entirely dangerous.

Here's a test. Say the numbers one through five, ending each as though you're asking a question, pitch rising at the end. One? Two? Three? Four? Five? Now say them again, each ending flat and final. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Schwartzberg has run this with thousands of students. An overwhelming majority rate the second version as stronger, more confident, and more authoritative. Not marginally. By a wide margin. Same numbers, same voice, same room. The only difference was the pitch of the final syllable.

The credibility signal arrives before your words do. When pitch rises at the end of a statement, the brain receives: I'm not sure. A falling pitch sends: I know this. The content is identical. The authority isn't. That's the problem with "just have a good point" — you've been handed the root and nobody mentions the grip.

Schwartzberg calls the downward version "power periods" — the spoken equivalent of ending a sentence with a period. The opposite is uptalk: a rising-pitch habit that turns accurate statements into questions. It doesn't matter how strong the point is if it arrives sounding uncertain about itself.

Volume follows the same logic. The fear of going too loud is nearly imaginary: ask students to speak uncomfortably loudly and they top out at slightly above normal for about six words.

In Schwartzberg's observation, listeners need roughly twice as long to absorb a thought as it takes to say it. A pause isn't dead air; it's the moment the idea actually lands. It also solves the mouth-ahead-of-brain problem: pausing lets you finish a thought before you voice it. That's not a style choice. That's the difference between saying something and meaning it.

Your Nerves Were Never the Problem — Roy Planted Them

Imagine a financial advisor who secretly works for your competitors. They sit at your table, speak your language, present themselves as entirely on your side — so you follow their counsel closely. The losses that follow register as your own bad judgment, not their sabotage. That's the structure Schwartzberg identifies in public speaking anxiety. The voice that tells you you're screwing up, that everyone finds you boring, that your nerves are visible — you trust it because it sounds like you. It comes from inside.

Schwartzberg names this voice Roy, chief spokesperson of what he calls the Department of Homeland Insecurity. The naming matters because what you name, you can examine. And Roy, examined, has a specific job description: not to report accurately on your performance, but to manufacture failure. He's deliberate. He generates the pre-speech dread, whispers "you're screwing up" while you're mid-sentence, and pulls off his cleanest trick at the opening: getting you to announce failure before it happens. "This isn't going to be very good" isn't an honest disclosure — it's Roy closing the deal.

Every piece of advice you've gotten has been about endurance. Breathe through it. Do it enough times. Wait. None of that touches Roy because Roy doesn't care how many reps you've logged. Schwartzberg's diagnosis is harder and more useful: Roy isn't reporting reality. He's manufacturing it. Name the operation, and you've already disrupted most of it.

The three-part fix follows directly. Know your point. If you don't have one, the nervousness is actually correct, because something is genuinely missing. Recognize that the moment is about the point, not you. Your audience didn't arrive to evaluate your performance; they arrived to receive something, and once you make that shift, Roy loses most of his material. Practice out loud. Not mentally, not in a whisper. Mouth and brain only coordinate when the mouth is actually moving.

The only valid test of whether any of it worked: approach someone from your audience afterward and ask them what your point was. Mirrors don't know. Supportive colleagues who say "you did great" are reporting how they feel. Roy is useless. The only measure that counts is whether the idea transferred from your head to theirs.

Your nerves didn't fail you. You were handed a fake map by someone with a stake in you getting lost. Now you know who drew it.

The Fix Was Always Upstream

Every failure Schwartzberg traces back to the same missed decision: what do you actually believe, and are you willing to say it before you start talking? The rambling, the forgettable ending, the nerves showing up before you've said a word — none of these are character flaws. They're what happens downstream when nothing is defined upstream. Build the point first, test it until it holds weight, and most of what felt like a delivery problem disappears.

What remains is learnable: the falling pitch, the pause, the willingness to be louder when Roy tells you to make yourself small.

Roy. Who said it was your accent, your hands, your slides. Who never once pointed at the missing sentence. He had reasons for that.

You know his name now. Name him the next time he shows up. That's most of the work.