Pauses Why Are They Important and How to Correctly Use Them

Listening to a speech, it is very common to hear pause fillers like “er”, “um”, “ng”, “ok”, “you know”, uttered by a speaker. These irritating words usually occur at the end of a sentence or beginning of a sentence or phrases. Why do these unnecessary words have to appear?

These are the word whiskers, word clutches or pause fillers – the terms used by language communication specialists. Worse of all, this unproductive sound usually appeared frequently during important parts of our professional life – media interview and panel discussion. Still are pauses are important in a speech?

Why Are Pauses Important?

In fact, pause is part and parcel of a speech. Pause is an important element of a speech.

Pauses enable the speaker to breathe, to think ahead, and to enable listeners to think about what has been stated.

Pauses also provide opportunities for a change of pitch. Pauses can be long, medium or short in length, depending on the situation.

When To Use Pauses?

• Pause before you begin to speech.
• Pause to indicate different ideas.
• When you pause, pause clearly. Don’t let fillers punctuate your sentence.
• When you pause, maintain eye contact with the audience. Don’t look over the audience or lift your head up, trying to recall or think of something.
• Pauses help you to break down your thoughts into units when you speak.

An important aspect of pauses is to slow down the rate of speaking. In written communication, we use, commas, colons or full stops to separate ideas; pauses will help us to break down our thoughts into different units.

Here are some of the ways where we can use pauses to highlight our message to listeners.

1. Use pauses after phrases that begin with prepositions and adverbs.

• By the time I reached London, (pause) the game between Liverpool andChelsea was over.
• Despite all our efforts, (pause) our team could not reachMount Everest.

2. Use pauses when giving a list of items. This is to help listeners receive the information.

• The Success Corporation needs to relocate its office, (pause) open five new branches, (pause) recruit five more executives, (pause)and employ fifty more staff.
• The chairman wishes to review the strategic plan, (pause) develop new processes, (pause) revise marketing plan, (pause) and rethink the vision.

3. Uses pauses before the connecting words, such as, “and”, “that”, “but”, ‘or”, “because”, “however”, and other conjunctions.

• Johnny is a good and honest staff, (pause) but he is always late for work.
• I told them (pause) that there was uncertainty for early profits, (pause) yet they still poured in more money for this stock.

Always keep in mind that speaking texts and reading texts must be crafted differently. When we speak we have to look into the eyes of the audience and create rapport with them.

Our eyes have to talk with their eyes; our facial expression has to enhance our verbal message. When we read, we look at the text and read aloud.

Therefore, when we speak we need to pause for breath whenever there is a colon or full stop. Sometimes, in a long sentence, more pauses are needed.

Pausing Exercise

Practise this prose and vary the length of pauses.

The darling princess is dead. She looks so radiant and bright even though she is dead. Is she asleep? No. she is dead! No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. Our darling Princess Diana, so serene and so calm, motionlessly lying there peacefully awaiting her Prince Charming to come; yet there is no sign of him. Yes, she is dead

Try this speech from Winston Churchill.

The whole fury and might – or the enemy – must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows – that he will have to break us in this island – or lose the war. If we can stand up to him – all Europe – may be free – and the life of the world may move forward – into broad sunlit uplands. – But if we fail – then the whole world – including the United States – including all that we have known and cared for – will sink into the abyss – of a new dark age – made more sinister – and perhaps more protracted – by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore – brace ourselves to our duties – and so bear ourselves that – if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years – men will say – “This – was their finest hour.”

Speak with pauses (as indicated by a dash -) Can you feel the effect?

Like to learn the tricks and techniques to delivering powerful presentation or how you can overcome your fears of public speaking once and for all? Visit Ernest’s website, www.EarnestlySpeaking.com to learn about his public speaking programs in Singapore!

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