The art of elocution once reserved for the grand stages and parlours of yesteryear is today replaced by speaking to pitch ideas, deliver a keynote or weave a captivating tale. These all rely crucially on how you speak.

1. Audibility: Make Yourself Heard

Audibility is more than just volume. It is about ensuring your voice reaches every listener, whether in a packed auditorium or on a video call. This means understanding your environment, using microphones effectively, managing background noise and projecting your voice confidently. Techniques like breath control, resonance and mastering your vocal registers help you maintain clarity and stamina, especially in longer sessions.

2. Distinctness: Speak Clearly, Be Understood

With diverse audiences and global reach, clear speech is essential to be understood. Distinctness involves crisp articulation of vowels and consonants, precise pronunciation and mindful enunciation. This also means being aware of regional accents, inclusive language and if presenting virtually, ensuring that your technology and slides don’t muffle your message. Practising ensures your words are easily recognisable and your message doesn’t get lost in translation.

3. Expression: Breathe Life Into Your Words

Storytelling is about connection and making your audience feel the emotions behind your words. Expression encompasses how you pace your speech (using pause and phrasing), where you place emphasis and how you modulate your voice with changes in rate, pitch and intensity.

Expression also means harnessing body language, gesture and facial expressions, even through a webcam. What we do can say more than our words.

Rhyme, rhythm, prosody and the subtle use of tone colour turn even the most factual presentations into memorable experiences.

The elements of elocution are:

1. Audibility
2. Distinctness
3. Expression

Audibility is the power of making the voice heard and includes the study of:

1. Breath control
2. Phonation (the act of producing voice by means of the vocal cord)
3. Resonance
4. Vocal registers

Distinctness is the power of making words easily recognisable and includes the study of:

1. Vowel and consonants
2. Articulation
3. Pronunciation

Expression is the power of making an audience feel the emotions and thoughts of the author – the voice and manner must suit the words. Expression includes the study of:

1. Pause and phrasing
2. Emphasis
3. Modulation including rate, pitch inflection and intensity
4. Rhyme, rhythm and prosody
5. Gesture and facial expression
6. Tone colour

Above are an excerpt from my grandmothers notebook.

Bringing It All Together

At its core, elocution is about authenticity and connection. By combining audibility, distinctness and expression, presenters and storytellers can engage audiences, foster understanding and inspire action.

When you are getting ready to next practice, present or share a story, remember – your voice is your instrument and every audience deserves to hear it played beautifully.

The best way to get better is to practice, present and tell stories more, obtaining feedback afterwards from your audience.

Further Reading

Lessons from my Grandmother’s Notebook: Rediscovering the Art of Speaking