That wise, erudite and all-round wonderful Canadian communications chanteuse, Donna Papacosta, points us to the importance of voice training, whether we are podcasters, newsreaders or just plain-ol-’ornery conference speakers and presenters.
Donna recommends the Dr Seuss books, as does the resident sage at Voices.com’s Vox Daily blog, Stephanie Ciccarelli.
As Nancy, one of the commentors to Stephanie’s post says,
“For years, I’ve used ONE FISH TWO FISH to guide my clients who struggle with “what word[s] should I emphasize in the line of ad copy so that I don’t sound announcery?!?” There is ONE KEY TRICK buried in that book that is 100% analagous to the necessary rhythms of ad copy (esp. TV copy). It works every time.”
Run down to your local library now and grab a copy. Since Donna is the closest I know to voice perfection (and waaaaay in advance of me), I take her advice very seriously and will be borrowing a few Dr Seuss’ myself later today… after all, the requests for me to speak are starting to flow in — Perth in July, Melbourne and Sydney again July/Aug/Sept and November, South Africa in August…
