Jul 27, 2021
Anticipation… wait for it… moments are powerful. Why? Properly placed pauses engage the audience and make them active listeners.
Writers use dashes, ellipses, commas, colons, and semi-colons to indicate pauses. Speakers need to fill in those spaces with an emotion and attitude that rides on the breath and connects the statements together. Contrary to what some people think, adding a pause doesn’t mean that the speaker disengages, quits working, closes the mouth, and stops the airflow. Pauses should be filled with opinion and attitude to activate audiences, add impact, anticipation, drama, comedy, and memory retention. Pauses are also used to shift focus from one topic to another.
In Real Talking Tips Episode 22, Elaine Clark demonstrates three main areas where speakers can add pauses.
- Pauses help create a dialog with the listener when a statement has numerous choices and answers.
- Comedians and Speakers use pauses to get a laugh.
- Longer dramatic or ‘pregnant pauses’ add impact.
Pauses add tempo changes and jazz up the speech tune.