When their results were published in professional journals in 1967, they were widely circulated across mass media in abbreviated form. Because the figures were so easy to remember, most people forgot about what they really meant. Hence, the myth that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal was born. And we have been suffering from it ever since. The fact is Professor Mehrabian's research had nothing to do with giving speeches, because it was based on the information that could be conveyed in a single word.