Reading and Teleprompter

Best Practice :: Fundamental

Study and mark your copy for proper emphases. This is critical, because it forces you to consider exactly what is most important about the story. Until you know what is most important, you really cannot make proper sense of your read.

You may sound professional ... even credible. But there will be no authentic sense of purpose in your performance. It will ultimately be generic and emotionally flat or — even worse — inappropriate.

In general, the key to choosing the right words and phrases for emphasis is understanding that, in conversation, people use emphasis to:

• introduce new information
• state or imply an important contrast.

For the purposes of newsreading, understanding the nature of contrast is most critical.

Consider this simple example: You have a story that features this sentence: "The truck was red":

If the point you are making is that it was a truck and not another type of vehicle, you emphasize the word "truck".

If the point you are making is that it was red and not some other color, you emphasize the word "red".

If the point you are making is that the color has changed, you emphasize the word "was".

Any of these emphases could be correct, depending on the contrast you want to imply with your choice.

Choosing the emphases before you’re on the air is one of the most powerful steps you can take to ensure your interpretation is focused and powerful, not just pleasant and generic.

Reading and Teleprompter: