Ask HN: What are your techniques to improve public speaking and talk smart? - bryk
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Reading. There are different styles of speech that sound "smart" to different
people. If you like academic (especially, statistical/mathematical) jibber-
jabber, you would have to read (ideally study) a lot of academic works
(textbooks, papers, blog posts, whatever). In time, you'll pick up a lot of
that style of speech. If you think the political/financial articles in NYT,
Economist and other such publications are the epitome of the sophisticated
speech, you should definitely read those papers voraciously. Their jive will
rub off on you whether you like it or not. The only problem: if you're not a
native speaker of English(I am not, btw), your speech will sound a bit
stilted. Anyhow, this is my experience. As a kid I used to prefer spending my
time reading 19th century Russian writers (hand-me-downs from older
generations) and newspaper articles on current matters to spending time with
my peers. My speech definitely reflected that for a long time because people
would often comment how weird (and funny) it was.

Personally, the smartest sounding speech to me is the one where people get
their point across in fewest words and clearest way possible.

One of the current stylistic techniques(?) that I really dislike is using a
long winded quote as a descriptor of something/one.

