Free tips · Stage craft · Tip 16 of 19
Keep the ball in the air
Every time your voice drops at a full stop, your audience relaxes. And stops listening.
Inside a paragraph, end commas and sentences on a held or slightly lifted note so the thought stays alive. Land it down only at the end, on the point you want remembered. This is a held suspension, not a question. The opposite of uptalk is downtalk: dropping at the end of every clause. It sounds flat and makes people tune out. Go up when you're not finished, down when you are.
Read a three-sentence update twice. First drop every sentence (it sounds like a list). Then hold the first two and land the last (it sounds like one argument). Record both in the practice room.
- Continuation rise
- A rise or held pitch that tells the listener more is coming. Linguists contrast it with the final fall, which signals completion.
Chris Agos, voice-over coach: Upward inflections (free voice-over lesson). How and why upward inflections are used, set against the downward inflection most voice work is built on.
YouTube (chosen by Fred): Upspeak vs upward inflection. Why upspeak is a problem, and how it differs from a deliberate upward inflection.
- StageMilk: Punctuation for actors
- StageMilk: Get to the end of the line
- Penn Working Papers in Linguistics: Rising pitch, continuation and discourse
- Article: Uptalk, downtalk, and the voice that keeps people listening
- Sally Prosser, That Voice podcast ep. 17: Do you do this? At the end of every sentence?
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