An attention getter is the first one to three sentences of a speech, written to make the audience want to hear the rest. The dependable types are a story begun in the middle, a real question, one surprising number, a quotation, a bold claim, a contrast, an “imagine” scene, humor about the room, a reference to the occasion, and a prop or demonstration. Whichever you choose, the next sentence has to connect it to your topic, or the room may feel tricked.
This page is for choosing that first move. Below are 60 attention getters, six of each type: mostly originals written for different speeches, from class assignments to toasts, plus eleven from famous public-domain speeches, with the speaker and the date. For what comes after the hook (credibility, thesis and preview) and how long the whole opening should run, see how to start a speech.
| Type | Works best when | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| TypeStories | Works best whenYou have a real moment with a time, a place and a person | Examples1–6 |
| TypeQuestions | Works best whenYou want an answer, aloud, by hands or in people's heads | Examples7–12 |
| TypeNumbers and facts | Works best whenOne figure carries your point and you can name its source | Examples13–18 |
| TypeQuotations | Works best whenSomeone inside your subject said it better than you can | Examples19–24 |
| TypeBold claims | Works best whenYour audience half disagrees with your thesis | Examples25–30 |
| TypeContrasts | Works best whenThere's a gap between what people assume and what's true | Examples31–36 |
| TypeImagine and what-if | Works best whenThe audience has never been where your topic happens | Examples37–42 |
| TypeHumor | Works best whenThe laugh comes from the room, the occasion or you | Examples43–48 |
| TypeOccasion and place | Works best whenEveryone knows why they're here, and it matters | Examples49–54 |
| TypeProps and demonstrations | Works best whenOne object or sound can do the explaining | Examples55–60 |
Story attention getters
Start in the middle of a moment, with a time, a place and a person already doing something. Stop before the outcome: the speech can finish it. Opening in medias res skips the setup many first drafts start with, and the audience catches up on its own.
- “At 2:14 on a Sunday morning, my phone lit up with a text from a number I didn't know: ‘Is this Ana's sister? She's okay, but you should come.’” — For an informative speech on setting up emergency contacts. A time, a phone and a message the room wants explained.
- “My grandmother kept a shoebox of seeds labeled in a language none of us could read. When she died, nobody knew what any of them would grow.” — For a talk on seed libraries or family history. It ends on an open question that holds the room until you answer it.
- “On my first day as a waiter, I dropped a tray of eleven glasses beside a table celebrating a fiftieth anniversary. The husband stood up and started to clap.” — For a talk on handling mistakes at work. Two sentences: a small disaster and a turn nobody expects.
- “The first time I flew a small plane, the instructor took her hands off the controls at two thousand feet and said, ‘Your airplane.’” — For a talk on delegating. The quoted line can come back as the speech's refrain.
- “Last spring, a student on my floor asked me to proofread her scholarship essay. She'd written it in forty minutes, on her phone, on the bus.” — For a persuasive speech asking for evening hours at the campus writing center. The details argue before you do.
- “Three years ago, eleven people met in the back room of this restaurant to argue about whether a running club needed a constitution. Tonight there are two hundred of us.” — For a club banquet or anniversary. An origin story everyone half knows, with a number at each end.
Any of these still needs two more sentences before it has done its job: a bridge that carries the story toward your subject, and the point itself. Here is story 5 finished:
Hook. “Last spring, a student on my floor asked me to proofread her scholarship essay. She'd written it in forty minutes, on her phone, on the bus.” Bridge. “She wasn't careless. The writing center closes at five, and her shift ends at six.” Point. “I'm asking the student senate to keep the writing center open until nine, three nights a week.”
The bridge answers the question the hook raised (why forty minutes on a bus?), and the answer is the problem the speech will solve. There's more on that middle sentence after the 60 examples.
Questions for the room, and rhetorical ones
Decide first whether you want an answer. Questions 7 to 9 ask for hands or a spoken reply, so wait for it and use what you get. Questions 10 to 12 are rhetorical: people answer in their heads, or the speech answers for them. Either way, a question with an obvious answer is a lecture in disguise.
- “Hands up if you've ever said ‘I'll just check one thing’ and looked up forty minutes later.” — For a talk on phone habits or focus. Most hands go up, so the whole room has joined in within five seconds.
- “What's the oldest thing you own that you still use every week?” — For a talk on repair, thrift or design. Ask, pause, then take two answers from the room and build on them.
- “How many of you know all four of your grandparents' first names? Keep your hand up if you know where all four were born.” — For a talk on recording family history. The second question thins out the hands, and the speech lives in that gap.
- “If you had to leave your home in ten minutes with one bag, what would be in it?” — For an informative speech on emergency kits. The deadline makes everyone answer privately, which is the point.
- “Next time you sit by an airplane window, look for the tiny hole near the bottom of the pane. Why is it there?” — For an informative speech on how aircraft handle cabin pressure. A puzzle about something ordinary, with the answer promised by the end. Check the explanation with an aviation source before you build a speech on it.
- “Which of you has changed a perfectly good sentence in someone else's report, just because you were the last one to touch it?” — For a talk to editors on over-editing. Experts often laugh when a question describes them exactly.
Numbers and surprising facts
One number, not five, made physical enough to picture. If it isn't yours, say where it comes from in the same sentence and round it. Examples 13 and 14 are quoted from the speeches named; 15 and 16 are worked sums, so redo them with current figures before you use them.
If the number should come from your own material, attach the report or survey to the Strokes Assistant and ask for its most surprising figure along with the sentence it came from, so you can check it in context.
- “One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race.” — Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition address, September 18, 1895. A fact about the audience's own region, and in the next sentence its consequence: no enterprise there “can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success.”
- “No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century.” — John F. Kennedy, Rice University, Houston, September 12, 1962. A span nobody can picture, shrunk to one lifetime. On that scale, he says early in the speech, “Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels.”
- “If you read for twenty minutes a day, that's about 120 hours a year: three full work weeks of reading.” — For a persuasive speech on reading habits. A small daily habit converted into a unit everyone can feel (20 minutes × 365 days is about 122 hours).
- “A $300,000, thirty-year mortgage at 7 percent costs about $418,000 in interest. That's more than you borrowed.” — For a personal finance talk. A number bigger than the thing it's attached to does the surprising for you. The punch line depends on the rate: below about 5.3 percent, the interest comes to less than the loan, so rerun the sum with the rate on the day you speak.
- “I've applied for sixty-one jobs since March. Four interviews. One offer, which I turned down. That one is why I'm up here.” — For a talk on job hunting. A run of personal numbers with a turn at the end becomes a story.
- “This speech is about six hundred and fifty words long. You'll remember perhaps one sentence of it, so I'd like to choose which one.” — For a talk on public speaking or memory. The speech's own length becomes the number, and the room listens for the sentence.
Quotations worth borrowing
Quote someone inside your subject, or a famous line the room already knows, and put it to work in the very next sentence.
- “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” — Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. Near the start of the speech he quotes a saying from the Gospels his audience knew well, then turns it into his thesis in twelve words.
- “My father had one rule about the family car: ‘Leave it with more gas than you found it.’ This speech is about the office kitchen.” — For a lighthearted talk on shared spaces at work. A family saying is a quotation nobody in the room has heard before.
- “The safety manual for this lab is 112 pages long. Page one says: ‘If in doubt, stop.’ I'd like to talk about the other 111.” — For a lab safety briefing. Quoting a document the audience is responsible for gives you authority and a laugh.
- “A customer wrote to us last month: ‘Your app is great, but I don't know what it's for.’ That's the best review of our homepage I've read all year.” — For a product team meeting on messaging. The user's own words name the problem better than a slide could.
- “When I told my six-year-old I was giving a talk on retirement savings, she asked, ‘Is that money you're not allowed to spend?’ Yes. That's exactly what it is.” — For a workplace benefits talk. A child's definition is often the clearest one available.
- “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ Dickens was writing about 1775. Our finance team said it about the third quarter.” — For a business update with mixed results. The opening of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), turned toward the room so it isn't just borrowed.
Bold claims and statements
State your conclusion before you've earned it, in one sentence the room half disagrees with. Then spend the speech earning it.
- “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.” — Lyndon B. Johnson, address to Congress on voting rights, March 15, 1965. The whole purpose of the speech in its first sentence, before a single detail of the bill.
- “Homework in elementary school doesn't work, and I have six minutes to convince a room full of teachers.” — For a persuasive speech to an audience that disagrees. Naming the resistance makes the claim braver and the room curious.
- “The most important person in this hospital is the one who cleans the operating rooms.” — For a staff appreciation talk. A ranking that surprises the people in the room makes them wait for the reason.
- “Most of the meetings you'll attend this year should have been documents.” — For a talk at a writing or tech conference. A claim the audience suspects is true and has never heard said out loud.
- “Every résumé in this pile is lying about one word: ‘proficient.’” — For a career workshop. Specific enough to check, and aimed at something everyone in the room has written.
- “The best thing that happened to our team this year was losing the Grantham contract.” — For an all-hands meeting after a setback. Bad news reframed in the first sentence tells people the speech has a point of view.
Contrasts and reversals
Put what people expect beside what is true, and the gap becomes the question your speech answers. It is juxtaposition at the scale of a sentence or two.
- “We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change.” — John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961. Three pairs in one sentence, each setting what the day might seem to be against what he says it is.
- “In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed.” — George W. Bush, address to Congress, September 20, 2001. He names the ritual the chamber expects, sets it aside, and says the report “has already been delivered by the American people.”
- “Our website promises a reply within twenty-four hours. Last month, our average reply took four days.” — For a customer support review. The gap between the promise and the record is the agenda.
- “Ten years ago, this field was a parking lot. If the council approves this plan, in ten years it will be a parking lot again.” — For a persuasive speech to save a park. Past and future frame the present in two sentences.
- “In the brochure, studying abroad looks like this.” [Slide: a café in the sun.] “My first week looked like this.” [Slide: a laundromat at midnight.] — For an informative talk to students thinking about a semester abroad. Two pictures make the contrast faster than words.
- “Every apartment in this building has a smoke alarm. I asked twelve neighbors what they'd do in the first two minutes after it goes off, and I got twelve different answers.” — For a fire-safety talk at a residents' meeting. What everyone has, next to what nobody has agreed on.
Imagine and what-if openers
Put the audience in a scene in the present tense with two or three physical details. Keep it under four sentences, then cut to your point.
- “Imagine it's eleven at night, your paper is due at nine, and the file won't open.” — For an informative speech on backing up your work. One sentence, and a feeling everyone in a classroom knows.
- “Close your eyes for a moment. You're at the bottom of the stairs in the house you grew up in. What's the first thing you smell?” — For a memoir workshop or a talk on memory. Use it only with a willing audience, and give them a few seconds of silence.
- “Suppose every email you sent today were printed on the front page of tomorrow's paper. Which one would you rewrite?” — For workplace communication training. A hypothetical that turns into a private question.
- “Imagine you're seventy-five. It's a Tuesday, ten in the morning. Where are you, and what are you doing?” — For a retirement planning or career talk. The time is fixed and the answer is open, so everyone fills it in differently.
- “Imagine a grocery store where every price tag is hidden until you reach the register.” — For a persuasive speech on medical price transparency. The analogy makes the argument before the argument starts.
- “Picture this room with the lights off and no windows. That was Room 14 at Quarry Hill Elementary for three weeks last winter, while the building was rewired.” — For a school budget speech. The audience is already sitting in the scene.
Humor that fits the room
Laugh at the room, the occasion or yourself, never at the people you're asking for something. If the joke misses, keep going.
- “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather.” — Mark Twain, “The Weather,” a toast at the New England Society's seventy-first annual dinner, New York, December 22, 1876. A joke about the one thing every guest at that dinner had in common.
- “I was told I had eight minutes. This speech runs seven. That leaves one minute for applause, so pace yourselves.” — For a banquet or an awards night. A joke about the speech itself relaxes the room and promises brevity.
- “I've been asked to talk about work-life balance, which is why my family is watching this on a livestream from home.” — For a conference talk. Self-deprecation that sets up the subject.
- “For the record, I am the person who replies all.” — For a talk on email etiquette at work. Admitting the sin you're about to preach against earns the right to preach.
- “My doctor told me to reduce stress, so naturally I agreed to give a speech to two hundred strangers.” — For a talk on stress or on public speaking. It names the speaker's nerves without apologizing for them.
- “Our IT team asked me to remind you that ‘Password1’ is not a password. It's a cry for help.” — For a security briefing. The laugh carries the talk's first lesson.
The occasion and the place
Say why everyone is here or where you're standing, and what that means today. Plain words work best on solemn occasions.
- “There has been a change of government.” — Woodrow Wilson, first inaugural address, March 4, 1913. Seven words of news before any ceremony. The next sentences explain the change: the House two years earlier, the Senate now.
- “We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France.” — Ronald Reagan, Pointe du Hoc, June 6, 1984. He describes the cliffs his audience is standing on, then the same spot forty years earlier, “dense with smoke and the cries of men.”
- “It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of my heroes.” — Barack Obama, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015. He opens on the speaker before him, who had marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge fifty years earlier.
- “I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons.” — William Jennings Bryan, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, July 9, 1896. He concedes the earlier speakers' stature, then says stature isn't the question.
- “Forty years ago, in this room, the town voted to build the high school. Tonight we're voting on whether to close it.” — For a persuasive speech at a town meeting. The room carries the history, so you don't have to.
- “We've lost the projector, the microphone is cutting out and we're twenty minutes behind. So let's start with the one thing that's working: you all showed up.” — For an event that's going wrong. Naming the problem the room can see beats pretending it isn't happening.
Props, sounds and demonstrations
Show one thing the back row can see, use it, then put it away. Test anything with a plug or a battery in the room beforehand.
- [Holds up a phone with a cracked screen and a small screwdriver.] “This phone cost eight hundred dollars. This screwdriver cost nine. By the end of this speech, you'll see why the second one matters more.” — For a persuasive speech on teaching repair skills. Two props and a promise.
- [Pours a glass of water from a pitcher.] “This came out of the tap in the hallway twenty minutes ago. Before I finish, I'll tell you everything that happened to it on the way here.” — For an informative speech on how a city treats its water. An ordinary object with a mystery attached.
- [Sets a kitchen timer for three minutes.] “When this rings, I stop talking, finished or not.” — For a talk on meetings that run long. The audience watches the timer, which is the point.
- [Holds up a folded letter.] “My grandfather wrote this to my grandmother from a ship in 1952. It has eleven spelling mistakes, and it's the best thing anyone in my family has ever written.” — For a talk on letter writing or a family reunion. The object carries the feeling, and the joke keeps it from getting heavy.
- [Rings a brass hand bell.] “That's the bell that ended every shift at the Tillman mill for sixty years. The mill closed in 1998. Tonight we decide what the building becomes.” — For a public meeting on reusing an old building. A sound takes the room back decades in a second.
- “Take out your phone. Open your photos and scroll to the very first one. That picture is what this speech is about.” — For a talk on digital memories. A prop every person in the room already carries; check first that phones are allowed.
Pick one for your audience
The type matters less than the fit. Start from the state your audience is in when you stand up, then choose.
| If your audience is… | Try | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| If your audience is…Required to be there: a class, a mandatory training | TryA question that needs hands (7, 9), a timer (57), a number about the speech itself (18) | AvoidA long quotation, a slow story |
| If your audience is…Skeptical or opposed | TryA concession (52), a contrast they can check (33) | AvoidA joke at their expense, a claim before they know who you are |
| If your audience is…Grieving or solemn | TryA specific memory (2), the place named plainly (50) | AvoidOpening humor, statistics |
| If your audience is…Experts in your topic | TryA question that describes them (12), a number from their own field | AvoidA dictionary definition, the quote they hear at every conference |
| If your audience is…Online, cameras off | TryA poll or a question for the chat, a pair of slides (35) | AvoidA small prop, a show of hands nobody can see |
| If your audience is…Tired, after lunch or late in the day | TryHumor about the moment (44, 54), something to do (60) | AvoidDimming the lights for a long story |
| If your audience is…Children | TryA prop (56), a puzzle question (11) | AvoidRhetorical questions, irony |
The type also has to fit what you are asking for. In a persuasive speech the attention getter works hardest when it doubles as the first piece of evidence, which is why the four full speeches in persuasive speech examples reach the ask, or a number the room can't dispute, within their first few sentences. If you are still choosing a subject, start with the 150 informative speech topics; most of them suggest their own hook.
Write the bridge to your topic
The sentence after the attention getter often decides whether it worked. It has to carry the image or the question into your thesis without a change of gear. Three examples, from hook to point:
Hook (10). “If you had to leave your home in ten minutes with one bag, what would be in it?” Bridge. “Most of us would grab a phone and keys, then stand in the hallway trying to remember where the passports are.” Point. “A bag packed in advance turns those ten minutes into two, and tonight I'll show you what goes in it.”
Hook (28). “Most of the meetings you'll attend this year should have been documents.” Bridge. “I know, because I've run plenty of them, including two this week I'm not proud of.” Point. “Write the decision down before the meeting, and half your meetings disappear while the rest get shorter.”
Hook (59). [Rings the bell.] “That's the bell that ended every shift at the Tillman mill for sixty years.” Bridge. “For four hundred families in this town, that sound meant the workday was over.” Point. “I'm asking the board to turn the mill into workshops and apartments, so it can mean the start of one again.”
A bridge fails in two ways. It skips, when the hook was about your dog and the next sentence is about tax policy, or it lingers, with three more sentences about the dog. One sentence, two at most. The bridge is also a good place for your credibility, the first of the three classical appeals: in the second example, “I've run plenty of them” is the speaker's qualification. The speech outline template gives the hook and the thesis a line each, so you can check that one leads to the other before you write the body.
Attention getters that backfire
Every type on this page has a risky version. These are the ones that lose a room in the first ten seconds:
- Fake emergencies and stunts. A staged collapse, a fake phone call, a shout from the back. The audience spends the speech recovering instead of listening, and some of them stop trusting you.
- Shock nobody agreed to. Graphic statistics or images about death, violence or illness land hardest on the people in the room who have lived them. Use the gentlest version that is still true.
- Questions with private answers. “Raise your hand if you've ever been in debt” gets no hands, or dishonest ones.
- A number with no source. If you can't say where it comes from in a few spoken words, don't use it. Someone may ask.
- A shaky attribution. Plenty of lines that circulate under famous names can't be found in anything those people wrote or said. Check the original text before you say a name aloud.
- A joke that needs explaining, or one borrowed from a search page with no connection to your topic.
- An “imagine” that runs a minute. After about four sentences, people tend to stop imagining and start waiting.
- A prop that fails. A video that needs Wi-Fi, a slide the back row can't read, a demonstration you never rehearsed in the room.
- The hook with no bridge. A great story followed by an unrelated thesis makes the audience feel tricked, and they spend the next minute deciding whether to trust you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good attention getter for an informative speech?
A puzzle question about something ordinary, one surprising fact with its source, a prop that shows the subject, or a short story about the first time you met the topic. An informative speech promises understanding, so strong openers often raise a question the speech will answer, such as why airplane windows have a tiny hole near the bottom.
What is a good attention getter for a persuasive speech?
One that makes the problem concrete before you argue: a contrast between the rule and common sense, a bold claim the audience half disagrees with, a number about the people in the room, or a short story about one person affected. State your position in the next sentence or two, so the hook becomes your first piece of evidence.
Can you start a speech with a question?
Yes, if you know which kind you are asking. A question for the room needs a show of hands or a spoken answer, a pause long enough for people to give it, and a line about what they just did. A rhetorical question is answered privately or by your speech. Avoid questions with an obvious answer and vague openers such as “Have you ever wondered…?”
How long should an attention getter be?
Usually one to three sentences, under about twenty seconds. The whole introduction, attention getter included, typically takes 10 to 15 percent of a speech, so in a five-minute speech the hook has to leave room for your credibility, your thesis and a preview in well under a minute.
