Speaking from Manuscript

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If you’ve watched the president of the United States deliver the annual State of the Union address, you may have noticed that he alternates between two teleprompter screens as he reads his speech. That’s because he’s delivering a speech from manuscript. When you speak from manuscript, you write your entire speech out and then read it word for word from the written text because your allegiance is to the words that you have prepared. Speaking from manuscript is common for presidential speeches. That’s because they are by nature quite long and will likely be quoted and interpreted throughout the world. A mistake in the delivery of such a speech might not merely embarrass the president but might also affect world events. Manuscript delivery is useful in any situation where accuracy, time constraints, or worries about misinterpretation outweigh the need for a casual and natural delivery style.

However, manuscript delivery also has a number of downsides. First, it’s time-consuming, involving countless rewrites to get the written message exactly right; this makes it a better fit for a president (who has a team of speechwriters at his disposal) than a typical college student. Second, the static nature of reading from a written speech—whether from a manuscript or a teleprompter—limits your ability to communicate nonverbally with movements, facial expressions, gestures, or eye contact. As you’ll learn later in this chapter, planning and rehearsing are crucial for overcoming these tendencies when delivering a speech from manuscript.