0190 – Marking Up For… Questions

0190 – Marking Up For… Questions

Marking up for… questions

Do you know how question marks are used?

Of course, you do! But I wrote that sentence to illustrate how, when you read it aloud or in your mind, your tone of voice rose when you spotted that ‘?’ at the end.

In English intonation, sentences usually rise in the middle, and end on a downward note. Sometimes called ‘uppers and downers’, they are signposts to the listener, showing the way the sentence and the thought is progressing. When there’s a question, though, the intonation usually rises at the end of the sentence.

And the ‘problem’ that we have in written English is that the indication for an up-tone comes at the very end of the sentence, well after we could have started the change in the voice. That’s not a problem if you can:

· sight-read a few words in advance of what you are actually saying

· see the script beforehand…

· and remember where the questions are.

So, it may be easier for you to circle any ‘?’ on your script so you can correctly intonate the ‘question sentence’ appropriately.

Incidentally, the grammatical structure of written Spanish doesn’t allow for an indication at the start of a sentence that it will turn out to be a question. (In English, by comparison, we might start with a ‘Who…’, ‘What…’, ‘When…’, ‘Where…’, ‘Why…’, ‘How…’.)

So, they indicate to the reader in another way that it is a question at the start rather than the end of the sentence: an ‘opening question mark’.

¿Perhaps you will find this useful.

Through these around-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios. If you're wondering about how to start a podcast, or have had one for a while - download every episode!

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2021.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo