How to slow down when speaking

• Measure before you fix: read a timed passage and work out your words per minute.
• Conversational English is often estimated at around 150 wpm; prepared presentations usually sit nearer 120 to 140 wpm.
• Pausing slows you down more naturally than stretching words. Add silence between ideas first.
• Breathe at the ends of phrases, not when you run out of air.
• A teleprompter set to a fixed wpm gives you an external pace to match, which retrains your sense of normal.
• Adrenaline speeds everyone up, so rehearse a little slower than your target.

Most fast talkers have one of a few causes. Adrenaline speeds almost everyone up in front of an audience. Some people are uncomfortable with silence and rush to fill it. Others know the material so well that they forget the listener is hearing it for the first time. Some are trying to squeeze a long script into a short slot, and some simply grew up around fast talkers and never noticed.

Speed isn't automatically a problem. Some people talk quickly and are still easy to follow, and some material, like comedy or high-energy promos, benefits from pace. It becomes a problem when listeners miss information, when you run out of breath mid-sentence, when you stumble, or when the rush makes you sound anxious.

The fix depends on the cause. If the script is too long for the time, cut words instead of speeding up. If it's nerves, work on breathing and rehearse your opening. If it's habit, you need an external pace to recalibrate against, which is where measuring and a teleprompter help.

Words per minute is the number of words you say divided by the minutes it takes. The speaking rate test times you reading a passage and does the calculation. You can also do it by hand: read a script of known length, time it, and divide. The words-to-minutes calculator works the other way round, telling you how long a script should take at a given pace.

As rough reference points, conversational English is commonly estimated at about 150 words per minute and prepared presentations usually land around 120 to 140. Many commercial voice-over reads sit between roughly 140 and 170 depending on the script, and audiobook narration is often planned at around 155. A deliberate, weighty delivery might be closer to 110. These are guides, not rules; clarity and the audience matter more than any number.

Measure more than once. Your reading rate and your spontaneous speaking rate are usually different, and your rate alone in your room is rarely your rate in front of people. Record yourself telling a story for one minute as well as reading, and try a run with a friend watching to see what adrenaline does.

If you try to slow down by dragging out every word, you'll sound sleepy or patronising. A better approach is to keep words at a natural speed and add silence between groups of words. Your overall rate drops, and clarity goes up, because each idea gets a moment to land.

Speech naturally falls into thought groups: short phrases of a few words that belong together. Pause briefly between thought groups, a little longer at the end of a sentence, and longest when you change topic. For example: "When the doors open / walk to the left / and wait by the blue sign. // The tour starts at ten."

Pauses always feel longer to the speaker than to the listener. A one-second pause after a key point sounds confident to an audience even if it feels endless to you. Recording yourself is the quickest way to believe this.

Many fast talkers run on whatever air is left, rushing to finish a sentence before it runs out and then gasping. Breath ends up dictating pace. Taking a breath at natural boundaries, instead of when you're empty, breaks that cycle.

Breathe low: let your belly and lower ribs expand as you inhale, keep your shoulders still, and keep the breath quiet. Every pause you've marked is a breath opportunity. In a script, mark breath points with a small tick so you don't have to decide on the fly.

A simple drill: read a paragraph and take a breath at every marked pause, even when you don't need one. It will feel slow. That's the point; it shows you how much room a natural delivery has. A long, slow exhale before you start speaking also takes some of the edge off adrenaline.

Your internal sense of speed is unreliable, especially if you've talked quickly for years. An external pace helps recalibrate it. SceneDub's teleprompter sets the scroll speed in words per minute, so you can paste your script, set it 10 to 20 wpm below your measured rate and read at the reading line. You can't rush ahead because the next words aren't on screen yet.

Start with a pace that feels a little too slow, often around 120 to 130 wpm for a presentation. Use the arrow keys to adjust in steps of 10 wpm until it feels deliberate but not unnatural. Tick the option to record audio while reading, then listen back. Most people find the slower take sounds normal to them on playback, not slow.

A teleprompter scrolls evenly, but good speech isn't even. Use it to learn a comfortable average, then practise the same script without it, from notes or memory, and measure again. If your rate creeps back up, return to the teleprompter for a few more sessions.

Slowing down doesn't mean holding one speed. Skilled speakers slow for names, numbers, key points, punchlines and emotional moments, and move faster through asides, lists and context the audience already knows. The average lands on target while the delivery stays alive.

Mark this in your script. Bracket the one or two sentences in each section that must land and write "slow" in the margin. Finishing your consonants also slows you naturally, because complete words take a fraction longer to say than clipped ones, and they're easier to understand.

Most speakers are fastest in the first 30 seconds, when adrenaline peaks. Rehearse your opening until you know it cold, and deliver it deliberately slower than feels right. Write "pause" or "breathe" at the top of your notes. Finish each sentence, including eye contact, before starting the next one.

Build natural pauses into the structure: a question to the room, a slide change, a sip of water between sections. If you're presenting alongside someone you trust, ask them to give you a small signal if you speed up.

In voice-over, pace is often fixed by the job. A 30-second spot has to come in at 30 seconds, so if the copy is too long you can't simply slow down. Time the script with the words-to-minutes calculator, then either ask whether the copy can be trimmed or find the time in shorter pauses rather than rushing the words.

1. Measure your baseline. Read a passage for one minute with the speaking rate test, or time a script of known length and divide the words by the minutes.
2. Pick a target. Choose a rate for the situation, for example 120 to 140 wpm for a presentation, or 10 to 20 wpm below your baseline if you're very fast.
3. Mark thought groups and breaths. Add single slashes between phrases, double slashes between ideas and small ticks where you'll breathe.
4. Rehearse at a fixed pace. Paste the script into the teleprompter, set it to your target wpm and read along with audio recording switched on.
5. Listen back. Play the take and decide whether it sounds slow or simply clear. Adjust the target by 10 wpm if needed.
6. Rehearse without support and re-measure. Deliver the script from notes, measure your rate again, and go back to the teleprompter if you've crept back up.