Giving an Academic Talk – [Jonathan Shewchuk] Sometimes silence is particularly articulate. One of the best (and most underused) speaking techniques I know is to leave a long pause right after making a key point. Let it sink in. It’s important to give yourself permission to take as long as you like to think of what to say next. There’s no hurry, no need to fill the spaces with sound. The audience is too busy trying to figure out what your slide means to care how long it takes you to think of the next sentence. You must extinguish the utterance “Uhhhhh” from your vocabulary. Vocalizations like “Ummm” are a half-conscious attempt to pin down the audience with a stream of sound. Remember that they’re not going anywhere. When you don’t know what to say, be silent and think patiently. The most common type of bad speaker I see is the one who speaks at a uniform speed, never slowing for emphasis, always seeming rushed, never leaving pauses, one slide running monotonously into the next. Figure out what it takes for you not to be that person.
