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teleprompter

How to read a teleprompter naturally

The tell is not that you are reading. It is that you are reading at a constant speed.

Everyone can spot a read. What gives it away is rarely the eyes — it is the rhythm. Speech has uneven pace: you slow down for something that matters, speed up through something familiar, and stop entirely when you change subject. A script scrolling at a fixed speed removes all of that, and the result sounds recited even when the delivery is otherwise good.

The fix is to make the script follow you rather than the other way round. With voice follow, the text moves at the speed you are speaking, which means you can slow down deliberately without falling behind and pause for as long as you like without the words running away.

Two practical things beyond that. Write the script the way you speak: short sentences, contractions, and no clause that needs a second read. And put the text large enough that you are reading a phrase at a glance rather than tracking word by word — the eye movement is what people see, and larger text means less of it.

The recording screen: a large scrolling script fills the middle of the phone with the live camera visible behind and around it. The record button, camera switch and prompter speed modes sit along the bottom.
The script stays readable over the live camera, and the camera switch sits within thumb reach while you record.

Mentioned in this article

Voice follow

The script scrolls as you speak. Pause and it waits; skip a sentence and it catches up. Recognition runs on the device.

Typography and accessibility

Text size, line spacing, side margins and alignment, with five faces including Lexend and OpenDyslexic. Right-to-left scripts lay out correctly without a setting.

Prompter size and cover mode

Set how much of the screen the script takes. At the top of the range it covers the camera entirely and you show through behind it — for people who would rather not watch themselves while reading.
How to read a teleprompter naturally