In many ways, your manuscript is a prop.
It is a physical artifact there to help your speech go more smoothly.
Don't simply treat your manuscript as an essay.
An essay is formatted for different purposes.
We want to format our manuscripts for easy reading.
So what are some things you might be doing here?
First, don't split a paragraph or sentence over multiple pages.
There's just no need for this.
You want to be able to look down,
and grasp everything you need to say in the next utterance.
Having to turn the page halfway through,
will just throw the sentence off,
and the pacing off unnecessarily.
In a related way,
put in page turns between chunks of talk.
So, a page turns part of the performance.
If you're transitioning between one idea and another,
that's a perfect place for a page turn.
It matches up with the flow of the ideas to have a longer pause there,
and having some type of physical movement.
In fact, I once had a student who did this great gag, I thought was hilarious.
He was talking about policy recommendations,
and he had just finished talking about the problems
facing this organization that he was talking about.
So, his last line in that section was,
"But it doesn't have to be like this.
It's time to turn the page."
And that's where he put it in the page turn.
He didn't play it up.
It was totally subtle,
but still the funniest speech tech jokes that I can think of.
Similarly, the speech writer,
Adam Garfinkle had this great piece of advice on page tech like that.
He said, "Fill only two thirds of the page."
Any time you put text on a page,
fill only two thirds.
Why? So, if you're at a podium,
and you're reading the script,
it minimizes how much you have to look down.
If you fill the whole page,
you might have to dip your chin,
and that sort of breaks natural eye contact.
So that's some stuff on page stuff. So what else?
I would say, write out numbers and symbols.
You might easily be able to read off one million two hundred and fifty thousand,
but you might as well write it out.
So, we've talked about how you should round numbers when writing for the ear.
Well, go ahead and write them out in your script as well.
And I say this because I know that when I forget to
write out numerals and symbols sometimes,
it will throw me off for second, right?
I just switch between reading sounds and converting,
then suddenly symbols into words.
And it's a small thing,
but writing out dollar,
instead of having a dollar symbol might help.
Certainly, writing out long complex numbers,
usually makes them easier to read off smoothly.
You might also put names and caps, Okay.
Capitalize them.
It's just a way of providing some type of visual difference in a manuscript,
will often say names differently from other words.
So a manuscript that highlights that,
can make it easier to prepare for names in the moment itself.
This is probably more important if you're writing scripts for someone else,
but it's not a bad habit to get into.
An elected official is probably very
thankful for the speechwriter who puts names in all caps,
and includes phonetic spellings of those names in parentheses.
In a related way,
you should also devise your own markup system,
so in previous videos,
we've looked at what I do.
I like slashes and paragraph breaks.
I might very rarely put exclamation phrases and caps,
but all that stuff that I'm doing the word processor after I print out the manuscript,
I might go back through with a pen,
and include up arrows or down arrows to remind me
about rising intensity, or falling tone.
Okay. So, let's say you've got your text, what next?
Print out the manuscript in large sans serif font, double space.
You want to be able to see that script without having to strain,
without having to pick it up, right?
I like at least,
16 point font, double spaced and something like a Calibri font.
Even with glasses, and I'm at the point now where I probably need bifocals,
even with glasses, that feels like a comfortable font to me.
But I wouldn't staple that manuscript.
So if you're on a podium, you want to be able to slide
the pages from the top, so you avoid the problems,
and maybe accidentally, hitting the microphone as you flip the pages,
but do number your pages in case it get out of order.
All of these small bits and pieces are just to say,
that manuscript is part of the performance.
It's there to support what you're doing orally.
I want to do things to that manuscript that
allow for the best oral performance to emerge.
So I want to treat the manuscript as a prop for oral delivery,
not simply as an essay that I'm trying to read.