Speech Pauses: 12 Techniques to Speak Volumes with Your Silence
An expert technique is the effective use of speech pauses. If you execute it correctly, no one will notice your pauses and your ideas will get across more effectively. If you get it wrong, your credibility is damaged, and your audience finds it difficult to understand what you are saying.
In this piece, we look at:
- Benefits of good speech pauses; strategies for naturally employing pauses (there are more than you think); and communications research that sheds light on the reasons why pauses are important for effective communication.
- Strategies for naturally employing pauses (there are more than you think); and communications research that sheds light on the reasons why pauses are important for effective communication.
- Communications research that sheds light on the reasons why pauses are important for effective communication.
Benefits of Speaking Pauses That Work
One of the most underutilized delivery strategies is pausing but doing so has many advantages.
Pausing increases audience comprehension.
You can punctuate your spoken words with pauses, which will help your listeners understand when one phrase, sentence, or paragraph ends and the next one begins.
Pauses are beneficial.
Long pauses are beneficial because they give you time to breathe deeply, chew your food, or drink some water. In addition to helping your brain (by giving it more oxygen), doing this will improve the quality of your voice by keeping your lips and throat moist.
Pauses encourage audience participation.
Speaking continuously means that your listeners must work extremely hard to keep up with you. Contrarily, using pauses offers your audience a chance to think about what you have said and begin establishing connections with their own experiences or knowledge in the present. The foundation of audience engagement is these personal connections that people make with your material.
Pausing instead of using filler words.
The excessive use of filler words (uh, er, ah) damages your credibility and suggests that you are unprepared, unknowledgeable, or unauthentic. How to stop using filler words like um, uh, and other similar expressions is covered in a previous Six Minute article. One of the easiest ways to achieve this while still giving yourself time to consider your next few words is by using pauses.
Allow your mouth to "catch up" with your mind.
A speaker juggles two responsibilities at once:
- Thinking about what to say (and do) next is the initial internal task.
- The second task, which is external, entails voicing the words aloud and interacting with an audience through body language and other means.
For a speaker to give, the internal activities should ideally create a queue of words and actions so that they are constantly available. Pauses allow the internal work to gain the upper hand and let your thinking to “catch up” to your lips.
“Utilizing speech pauses effectively is a master technique.”
Pause Methods
After looking at the advantages of speech pauses, let us analyze the different sorts of pauses and when they should be employed.
A. Clause Pausing (or the Comma Pause)
When you want to clearly distinguish between two clauses or the items in a list, utilize brief pauses in your voice instead of commas. For instance:
- I want to make my wife feel special on our anniversary [pause] I made pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast [pause].
James C. Humes recommends breaking up your speech material into a sequence of brief clauses, one per line, in Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln. Short pauses are added during practice whenever a line ends, including at the end of each clause.
B. The Pause in a Sentence
Where a period (or question mark, or exclamation point) would be used in written language to divide two sentences, use medium pauses in your voice instead. For instance:
- Ten years ago, we got married, and I can still clearly recall my initial impression of her as she walked down the aisle.
Just as a period is a stronger punctuation mark than a comma, a sentence pause should often be longer than a clause pauses. Be wary of the propensity to endlessly connect sentences with “and.” Your readers will lose this crucial semantic gap if you do this.
“Using pauses allows your listeners to process what you’ve said and begin instantly creating connections with their own experiences or expertise. The foundation of audience engagement is these personal connections that people make with your material.
C. The Break in the Text
To transition from one thought to the next, employ larger pauses in your voice, much as paragraphs are used in written language.
There are a couple of applications for this kind of pause:
- Put a space between two "pointers." e.g. The second advantage of this strategy is... [pause] The third advantage of this strategy is...
- Use a paragraph stop before and after the story to distinguish it from the "regular" speaking.
D. The Pause for Emphasis
Try pausing right before and right after an important word (or phrase) when you want to emphasize it (or phrase). These pauses, along with changes in pitch, loudness, or intonation, emphasize the keyword. The delay before it says to “listen up,” and the pause after it says to “store that in your mind.”
Prior to/following a word of transition or contrast:
- According to conventional knowledge, you should imagine your audience naked. This is bad advice.
After/before a vital word:
- Olivia Mitchell suggests chunking as a treatment for getting rid of uhs and ums.
According to research, “um” can occasionally aid in the auditory word recognition process. (More specifically, the word that comes after the utterance of “um” is more usually recognized.)
However, Corley and Hartsuiker (PDF publication) point out that a silent delay before the target word can achieve the same benefit. According to the temporal delay hypothesis, any form of delay that comes right before a critical word aid with recall.
E. Pause for a rhetorical question
Pause briefly after posing a rhetorical query to your audience. This motivates your audience to participate and reflect on their response to your question. The same is true for various methods in which you ask your audience to remain silent, such as “Think for a moment about how you would feel if…”
On the other hand, if you do not pause following a rhetorical question, your listener gets frustrated. After asking them a question, you are moving on before giving them a chance to consider it.
F. New Visual Pause
It is an innovative idea to pause when changing to a new slide while delivering a speech with slide visuals so that your audience has a chance to contemplate the image quietly. You indicate that the attention should return to you as you continue to speak. More complex pictures demand a longer delay before moving on, whereas simple images only need a brief pause. (Of course, it is best to keep images as straightforward as possible.)
G. "I'm Thinking" Pause
Despite your best efforts to slow down and prepare your speech, you may occasionally find that you speak before you are ready, locking your lips as your mind hunts for the next word. It is best to simply pause until you have collected yourself than to use a filler word, such as “ah,” “er,” or “uh.”
Even if you already know what you are going to say next, you can still utilize this method to intentionally stop for dramatic effect. However, that makes it a…
“Pause right before and right after a critical word” (or phrase). The first pause instructs the audience to “listen up,” and the second instructs the audience to “remember that.
H. Intensive Pause
A dramatic pause is utilized whenever you want to create some drama or tension. It serves both rhetorical and theatrical purposes.
Before continuing your spoken discourse, use a dramatic pause. You can also do this right before displaying a slide or a prop.
I. Punctuation Break
According to studies, pauses should be employed right before a funny punch line, as professional comedians contend. According to Archakis, et al. (PDF publication), pauses are also employed before and after punch lines in jokes, along with variations in speech rate and intensity.
Pause right before your punch line to heighten interest and indicate a payout. After your punchline, pause briefly to give your audience a chance to chuckle.
If there is laughter, keep the pause going. Otherwise, your remarks will be lost in the conversation’s competition for attention. In a similar vein, avoid speaking during applause.
J. Power Pause
In Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma by Pause Nick Morgan advises influential people to take longer breaks.
James C. Humes recommends beginning your presentation with a thoughtful pause in the first chapter of Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln:
Try to fix your gaze on each of your upcoming listeners before you speak. Before you start your presentation, make a point of mentally repeating the entire first sentence. The more you wait, the more powerful your opening remarks will be. Make Power Yours Before making any presentations, pause to complete your silent preparation.
In my own presentations, I frequently employ the Power Pause, and it has two amazing impacts. It first catches my audience’s attention. Second, it gives me a few seconds to gather my thoughts, take a deep breath, and boldly begin.
K. Take a Drink Break
You might need a drink of water every now and then during lengthy talks. Do not hold back but be sure you time it right. The best moment to get a drink is when you are already in a lengthier break, such when you are moving on to a new segment of the presentation or after you have just displayed a slide presentation for your audience to review.
On occasion, you can mask your desire for a moment to gather your thoughts and recover using this strategy. Max Atkinson adds in Lend Me Your Ears: All you Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations that audiences are “unlikely to notice that anything is wrong” because they are “familiar with the sight of presenters pausing to have a drink or to check their notes.”
L. Note-Checking Interval
According to research, pauses “participate in rendering human communication more understandable,” according to Brigitte Zellner’s article in PDF format. Furthermore, according to study by Grosjean and Deschamps from 1975, “the more difficult the communicative job, the larger the frequency of pauses.” is another thing Zellner brings out. She says:
Alternatively stated, pauses “stand out like sore fingers” and may therefore accept “beacon” positions in speech, helping to frame the entire utterance for the speaker and the listener. Pauses have a significant role in the development of speech comprehension by breaking up speech into smaller chunks.
The most important lesson here is that unlike with written content, your viewers will not profit from punctuation, bolding, italics, bullets, and other formatting. Pauses are a key component of providing that, which is something you must accomplish.
2. Pauses aid in expressing emotion.
According to research, pauses aid in expressing emotion along with other linguistic elements, as demonstrated by Janet Cahn’s (PDF article). That is, depending on whether you are expressing grief, rage, joy, or another emotion, the placement and length of pauses should change. To take advantage of this, utilize pauses to genuinely express emotion, just like you would when speaking to a friend or member of your family.
3. Pauses regulate the speed of your speech.
Because of cognitive constraints, your audience can only process information at a specific rate. Pauses give you the chance to slow down so they can hear you better. According to research, speech has small (0.15 seconds), medium (0.50 seconds), and long (1.50 seconds) pauses.
Estelle Campione and Jean Véronis noted this in their study (PDF). Additionally, they point out that while spontaneous speech (saying without reading) frequently employs medium and long pauses, read speech (speaking from written text) tends to only produce short and medium pauses.
Therefore, if you must read any of your speech, make sure to purposefully prolong your pauses to imitate a more naturally spontaneous speaking style. Otherwise, it will be tough for your audience to follow along. How long should a “short/medium/long pause” be in seconds?
Regarding the duration of your pauses, there is no set guideline. Depending on your speaking style, the nature of your message, the length of your talk, your audience, and cultural conventions, the right length for pauses can range from a fraction of a second to several seconds or more.
Think about the following suggestions:
- Although the length of your pauses may vary from that of another speaker's, you should do so consistently. For instance, your paragraph pauses should be shorter than your comma pauses (whatever long they may be). The advantages of using pauses will be lost if you do not do this, and your audience will become perplexed.
- If there are lengthy gaps, pause for a longer period than you believe is required or even comfortable for you.
- Ask for feedback on the pauses you utilize. Ask for open-minded opinions by posing questions like: Did my pauses appear natural? Any awkward pauses occurred? Was I moving too quickly or slowly overall?
- To evaluate your performance during pauses, use video recordings.
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