But there will come a time—at a party, waiting for a meeting to begin, mingling at a networking event, on a date or at a family reunion—when you will need some good conversation starters.

The way you start when you talk affects if you will be ignored. Distressing situations offer potential for major happiness. Sound paradoxical? It is, and it's true. Everyone loves a happy ending ...

I encourage you to develop ‘starter sentences’. These brief phrases and comments are part of your professional toolbox which you could pull out at any time to spark a conversation with a stranger.

The purpose of a discussion is to open up an issue and invite a range of opinions and interpretations. In this case you can challenge a speaker. The following sentence starters should be useful ...

Here are some other sentence starters Ripley recommends ... can you walk me through it?” turns it into a conversation about the idea. Even if in the end you don’t agree, that’s OK: The ...

This is a great classroom discussion activity that we actually ... of that discussion (whether students are using certain sentence-starters or if they are talking excessively) and then write ...