Speaking & communication
How to speak clearly
Being hard to follow usually has three causes: you speak faster than you breathe, your sentences run into each other, and your endings fade. None of them require elocution lessons. They require shorter sentences and audible stops.
Last updated
Pace: aim for 130-160 words per minute
Conversational clarity sits roughly in that band. Under pressure most people drift towards 180 and above, which is when listeners start reconstructing your sentences instead of following them. Read a paragraph aloud with a timer once to learn what your normal feels like.
Sentence length: use full stops as air
One long sentence versus three short ones
Before: So we looked at the data and it turned out that most of the drop-off was happening on the second screen which we hadn't really expected because the first screen was the one we'd been worried about, so we changed the copy there and it went up a bit.
After: Most of the drop-off was on the second screen. We had expected the first. We rewrote the copy on screen two and conversion rose four points.
Endings: stop, do not fade
Mumbling is often only the last three words of each sentence. Practise pushing volume through the final word — the difference in how clear you sound is much larger than the effort involved.
Drills
- Read a paragraph aloud, exaggerating the full stops. Then speak normally and keep half of that exaggeration.
- Answer a question in three short sentences, deliberately, with a pause between each.
- Record thirty seconds and mark every place a listener would have to guess a word.
Common questions
- Why do people ask me to repeat myself?
- Most often speed and faded endings rather than accent or volume. Slowing to roughly 140 words per minute and pushing through the last word of each sentence fixes the majority of cases.
- Can I change how I speak if I mumble?
- Yes. Mumbling is largely a habit of dropping energy at sentence ends, and it responds quickly to deliberate practice with recordings.
Hear yourself back
Run a session and see your pace, sentence length and where you trailed off.
Practise speaking clearlyFree, with no payment details and no locked features.