Punctuate your delivery!

In the October 29, 1982 issue of Marketing News, Thomas G. Cushing warned against falling victim to the Grandfather Clock syndrome:

“When you sit down in a room where there is a grandfather clock ticking, you initially hear it because it’s making noise, but after a while you don’t hear it anymore because it’s ticking at the same rate and same tone.”

If you get absorbed in what you are doing you may wind up speaking at a constant pace and boring your audience with a monotone drone. Instead you should punctuate your speech by varying both the pace and pitch. Lisa B. Marshall discussed it last year in this podcast.

Consider the difference between the following two signs outside of a tennis court:














One of my father’s college friends added the punctuation.