tellingpeople

I know it’s not quite technically correct all the time, but one of the ways children are taught about where to put commas into sentences is to think about where they’d breathe if they were saying it out loud. It doesn’t work all the time but it’s a pretty handy rule of thumb.

It also works in reverse – when you breathe, people infer a comma. That can have a significant effect upon the meaning of your words.

There are dozens of jokes floating around the web based upon mis-understandings of this kind but it’s worth remembering that it can have a significant effect in serious situations as well. For example, while I happily chewed on my Cornflakes this morning for breakfast I heard a newsreader insert a comma (okay, she took a breath!) which changed the meaning of her sentence from explaining why someone was on trial to explaining why they’d been found innocent.

As a speaker it’s important you don’t leave breath-silences in your presentation – they’re all too easy to mis-interpret. The common alternative – the trick of filling silences with an ‘err’ or an ‘ah’ – is also not helpful as it’s going to annoy large numbers of your audience. So what to do?

Learn to breathe correctly and get from one end of your sentence to the other without having to stop for air. Simple!

I can’t stress often enough on these pages how important it is to get your breathing down into your diaphragm, rather than relying on your chest muscles (your inter-costals). You’ll be so, so, so, so much easier to understand, hear and believe! Trust me on this!