"The right discussion may exist effective," Mark Twain once said, "merely no give-and-take was ever as effective as a rightly timed break." Assuming words for a author—but Twain was dead-on.

In public speaking—or just nigh any verbal communication, really—timing is crucial. A pause can be much more than simply a take a chance to catch your breath. Deployed the right style, it adds drama, weight, and clarity to your message. Merely if it's washed incorrect, your presentation may sound plodding or confused. Hither are three ways to principal the fine art of the pause in order to add together impact.

ane. Transitioning From Ane Thought To The Adjacent

If you forget every other fashion to break strategically, brand certain you nail this one. The same manner paragraph breaks work in writing, pauses mark one idea from the next when you're speaking. Call back well-nigh the difference between reading a page-long paragraph versus but a few short paragraphs. Which keeps y'all more focused and engaged? Short paragraphs hold our attention and help u.s.a. proceed i thought from haemorrhage into the next one; long paragraphs by and large don't.

In speaking, you need to use the pause when you transition from thought to idea—from speaking paragraph to speaking paragraph. Don't overdo information technology: Pauses should last around two seconds, and so count "one, two" in your head earlier moving on. Non only will you help your audience stay engaged, you'll requite anybody (yourself included) only enough time to mentally prepare for the side by side thought.

ii. Decision-making Your Step

The pause is critical for keeping you at a good pace. Think of your speaking like water flowing from a faucet onto your hand. If information technology'due south but a drip-baste, yous get impatient. If it'southward a powerful torrent, it tin can sting. You want to keep flowing at the right step, and then you feel relaxed and engaged and your listeners do, too.

Pauses can either help or injure. If you're pausing too oft or for too long between words, information technology's like a drippy faucet. Your audience can become distracted and annoyed. They might bank check out mentally. On the other hand, if yous blitz headlong through your talk, your audience volition pull back—too much over-caffeinated barking. But if y'all speak at a flowing footstep, your audition stays engaged.

By pausing strategically at the end of an important sentence or idea, yous tin can hit a rhythm that seems more natural. You'll go into a flow and go on your audition correct at that place with you the whole fourth dimension.

Photograph: Flickr user Al Ibrahim

3. Creating Dramatic Contrast

Unremarkably, when you become encounter a play, you experience the "fourth wall"–silently watching the events on stage as if they're real. Information technology wasn't always similar this. In classical theater, performers or a chorus would often address the audition in declaimed speeches and monologues. As audiences' tastes changed, the 4th wall solidified as a convention, offering a more than intimate window onto private or otherwise unseen events—in mutual parlance, creating more than drama.

We're watching a different yet related shift in business speaking today, away from declaimed podium speeches towards a looser, more dynamic fashion. And likewise, the goal is to go along audiences engaged. You can heighten the drama by breaking the rhythm of your speaking through well-placed pauses.

Suppose y'all're asking a rhetorical question: "Should we continue to innovate?" Rather than asking the question, immediately answering it, and continuing with your betoken, pause for a moment: "Should nosotros go along to innovate? [wait a beat] . . . Of course we should go on to innovate!"

Notice how the pause heightens attention; the question hangs in the air for a moment, letting listeners anticipate what the answer may be. At present try pausing fifty-fifty longer. Which is meliorate? Getting your pauses correct dramatizes your communication and keeps your audience engaged.

And adding drama to your speaking past mastering the intermission isn't just about how yous space your words. If you like to move when you speak, think about pausing your movement, as well, right earlier you make a cardinal bespeak. As your words finish, your body does too–and your audition will pick upwardly on that sharp intermission in movement. Y'all'll catch their attention as they wait to find out what's coming next.

So, remember: Intermission for punctuation, pause for pacing, and pause for a dramatic pop.