We all know that dead air is a big NO when it comes to podcasts. Yet it seems that one of the most common mistakes podcasters make is still in giving too little attention to pauses.

I am obviously not referring to the much too long pauses that lead to noticeable dead air, after all since they are noticeable, people DO take notice of them and keep them in mind when doing post-recording processing. What I am talking about it the little pauses that people usually do not notice during recording, but can be more glaring to listeners. This includes the little uhmms, and short pauses between sentences. These pauses may not seem much, but if you do it often enough it can get irritating. Since such pauses happen without you really thinking about it, it is really important that you be on the watch out for it while editing your podcast. As I have mentioned before, this means isolating each recorded track to be able to give it full attention.

The problem with pauses is not only in the having too many, but having too few. If you are a fast talker, like me, then probably your problem is not pausing too much, but in forgetting to pause at all. It takes a conscious effort on my part to pause after each sentence so that my words don’t get garbled. Since you’re probably used to your speaking speed, it would be a smart to ask someone to listen when you do the editing so they can tell you if it is understandable to them.

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Originally posted on December 29, 2011 @ 5:45 pm