A speaker once talked of the vastness of Siberia. How vast is it? "You could take the entire continental United States," he said, "and drop it inside Siberia and have room to spare on all sides."

He went on to discuss Siberia's forest resources. But rather than quote quantities, he simply said that Siberia has more timber than all the timber in the entire United States, and that it had a full quarter of the world's known timber reserves.

When you personalize facts, you not only put them in terms people can understand, but also create an image that can stick in the mind for years.

Another way to personalize facts is to relate them simply and directly to the audience's experiences.

When speaking of the overall yearly consumption of beer in the United States, for example, you could make the figure more meaningful for your listeners by saying something like, "that's twenty-two gallons of beer a year for everyone in this room. And when you take out children and the 25 percent of the population that rarely drinks, we're talking thirty-four gallons a person. What's thirty-four gallons? About fifteen cases."

Most people can't comprehend 6 billion gallons. But they understand fifteen cases of beer stacked up in the liquor store.

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