Presenters 'speak'

[Netty7]

Why do presenters (especially news and weather) slow down at the end of sentences saying the last 2 or 3 words slowly and precisely. Do you know what I mean? Speaking at normal pace and then ending a sentence as if there's a pause written between each of the.......last........few.....words! It's so irritating. Grr!

[spainlads]

If it's at the end of a programme or just before going live to an outside broadcast or videotape it's because they are being counted down by the gallery to the end/tape etc.

[Netty7]

I know what you're saying and I can understand that, but it happens all the time at any time. For eg the weathergirl on breakfast TV this am did it at the end of nearly every sentence!

[crisgal]

i think weather girls are the worst offenders for doing this. There are a couple on at the moment who are really annoying - one of them very nasal. Why do they do it? I imagine how stupid they must sound in their local spar asking for a pint of milk.

[ZedBee]

They do this because they are all reading from an autoque (a little telly under the camera showing them the script). They slow down as they're talking because thats preferable to a pause for them to 'buffer' the next half sentence in their memory from the scrolling text.

Try it yourself, just read a couple of posts from this site (oh i'm new here btw - hi :) ) and pretend you have to read em to a camera and you have to keep talking and not misread or fowl up whilst you're doing it.. you'll end up reading infront of what you're saying by about half a sentece :)

[Wispy68]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who finds certain things about presenter 'speak' annoying!!!

I've noticed the nasal thing..grrrr!, but what really gets me, is the female traffic reporters on the radio, who can't seem to say certain words like, "very" or "really", without doing a sort of croaky thing with their voice, as if to give it a bit of drama or emphasis.

Talking of the weather presenters, about a year ago I noticed that they seemed to forget that snow was actually called snow and kept referring to it as "the white stuff". So blinkin' annoying!!!

[Netty7]

I think you're making excuses for them Zedbee!! A lot of presenters read autocue but they don't do it, so it is possible to present at a constant pace without that irritating habit of slowing down.

I think they do it because they think it sounds effective - BUT IT DOESN'T!!