How to read a teleprompter without looking like you are reading

Eight habits that make it look natural

1. Set the pace yourself. The operator follows your voice. Slow down, speed up or stop, and the text waits with you.
2. Read the line at eye level. The operator keeps your current line in the same spot on the screen. Stay on that line and let the next one come to you.
3. Rehearse once, out loud, on the prompter. Ten minutes is enough to set the text size and fix any sentence that trips you up.
4. With presidential glass, change panels at the end of a thought. Both panels show the same text. Turn from one to the other at the end of a sentence, and you take in the whole room.
5. With a camera prompter, look through the words to the lens. Stand a little further back and ask for larger text. The further you are from the glass, the less your eyes appear to move.
6. Leave the script when you want to. Thank someone, react to the room, tell the story your way. The operator holds your place until you come back to the text.
7. Mark your pauses. Ask for a blank line wherever you want to breathe or wait for a reaction. A pause on the screen becomes a pause in the room.
8. If you lose your place, stop. Take a breath. The operator already has your line waiting, and a pause reads as confidence from the seats.

The three habits to drop

• Racing the text. It happens with self-scrolling apps, where the screen sets the speed. With an operator there is nothing to race.
• Reading in a flat voice. It comes from a script written for the page. Rewrite any sentence you would never say out loud. The script guide shows how.
• Staring at one panel. With a presidential pair, a speaker who only uses one side leaves half the room out.

What to tell your operator

Say how you like the text: large or small, short lines or long, and whether you tend to ad-lib. Mention any name you want spelled the way it sounds. Every presidential and camera package from Teleprompters BC includes a rehearsal with the operator for exactly this.

More guides

• Presidential or camera teleprompter?: Presidential glass for speaking to a room, a camera prompter for speaking to a lens.
• Do you need a teleprompter operator?: For a live event, yes. For a short solo video, an app is often enough.
• Confidence monitor or teleprompter?: A confidence monitor shows slides and notes. A teleprompter shows the full script, scrolling with the speaker.
• How to write a speech for a teleprompter: Short sentences, numbers spelled out, names spelled phonetically and a blank line at every pause.
• How many words is a 10 minute speech?: About 1,300 to 1,500 words, at 130 to 150 words a minute. A table for 2 to 45 minutes.