The Importance of Punctuation in Teleprompter Copy
Standard Telprompter
What do you mean you read commas in the teleprompter
It’s true, all these silly marks around the words get read in the Teleprompter. It seems strange, but they do serve a very very important purpose in the talents copy.
This weekend, I was working an event. I was given copy to format. The beginning of the speech was written well, but the second half of the speech was written by someone else.
This person’s style of writing was very “flow of consciousness” which is fine, and somewhat interesting, if it’s not being read aloud.
The talent, who had written the copy, was struggling in rehearsal. That evening I took not a small amount of time to go through the copy and make it teleprompter ready.
Commas provide a place for a breath, colons prompt the talent that a list is about to be read, semi-colons inform you that the list is over, but not the sentence.
All these things play into the intonation and intention behind the words.
Presidential “Speech” Teleprompter
In the rehearsal directly before going on stage, she went through my “edited” copy, and read like a champ. When before she said, “that’s just how I write.” My thought was, “yes, but that’s not how you read.”
While we Teleprompter-Rental.com have no problem massaging a script, if it is in grammatical rough shape, please give it to us with plenty of time to work it. We will make your teleprompter read go super smoothly.
