- Moderator
- #61
Reading a teleprompter, at least to my understanding, is basically just a more high-tech way of reading something word for word. In my speech classes in high school and college, the people who read word-for-word off a piece of paper, whether they wrote it or not, were a whole lot less convincing with their "speech" than those who wrote some notes or an outline on an index card and knew what they were talking about.
If you need to read something word-for-word, it gives the impression that you don't know the material and thus can't speak intelligibly about it without that assistance. Or, if not that, it gives the impression that you're reading someone else's words/thoughts.
So, i guess i would prefer someone only used notes. To me, it makes it more believable and convincing.
Not necessarily. How the crutch - excuse me, memory aid - is used depends on the speaker's skill with it. A skilled speaker using a prompter may only skim over it and speak extemporaneously around it. It's just a real time paperless version of notes. An unskilled speaker no matter how many or few notes will be so painful to listen to AND watch looking down and shuffling paper around you'd wish he didn't have them. There really is no difference, the speaker still has to know his business to be effective.
That is so well said - and it cuts to the chase about those who are so critical of teleprompters.