Listened to a speaker introduce his topic with a summary statement directed to his audience:”We are able to do that for you. I hope you will feel free to chime in whenever…“But there was one major problem. He didn’t pause when he hit the period. So it sounded more like “We are able to do that for you, I hope. You will feel free to chime in whenever…” The effect was a strong statement turned into a fingers-crossed wish.In the spoken word, punctuation is made with pauses and inflection. Without it the audience will have a tough time following all the nuances subleties and groupings that are natural in our messages this causes the audience to work harder to understand and process the information the net result is a message that is muddled eventually the audience just tunes out message missed.The interesting result is that by speaking slower — with more pauses/’punctuation’ — a speaker will actually speed up the transfer of information, because the audience can process it better. You probably had to read the previous paragraph twice to get all that was stated. The same would be true with the spoken word. Making it digestsible makes it quicker for you to move on.
Give your audience a chance to digest the message with appropriate and plentiful pauses, functioning as punctuation.
