On introductions and vocal delivery
Keeping the promise of elaborating on delivery I give two examples of scientific talks. If speaker have awareness on their vocal delivery, their talks would immediately improve. Continuing the theme better shown than tell , I look at Columbia University physicists Janna Levin's 2011 TED Talk The sound of the universe makes (click here to go there). In particular, I look at her introduction which takes roughly one minute. In these 74 seconds there are 188 words, here is the transcript (I added the times with an offset of -15 s): I want to ask you all to consider for a second the very simple fact that, by far, most of what we know about the universe comes to us from light. We can stand on the Earth and look up at the night sky and see stars with our bare eyes. The Sun burns our peripheral vision, we see light reflected off the Moon, and in the time since Galileo pointed that rudimentary telescope at the celestial bodies, the known universe (0:30) has come to us through l