Inflection in Speech: What It Is, With Examples
May 23, 2022
Inflection in speech is the way your pitch rises and falls as you talk, and it lands hardest on individual words. Bend a word up and you are telling the listener more is coming. Bend it down and you are telling them the thought is finished. Do neither and every sentence sounds the same.
This is episode 108 of Video Made Simple, the show that now runs as the Video Confidence Collective. It runs five minutes, and rather than describe inflection, Chris Schwager reads the same sentence twice, once flat and once with the pitch moving, so you hear the difference. He explains modulation using the pitch bend on an electric keyboard, then gets practical: where inflection belongs in a script, how to mark it up with commas, full stops, capitals and colour, and why marking every word wrecks it. He closes on pauses, and on the idea the whole episode is built around, which is that your delivery is judged on how people hear it rather than on how you said it. Chris Schwager is the Founder and CEO of Ridge Films and hosts the show. No guest on this one.
What is inflection in speech?
"Inflection is the modulation of intonation, or pitch in the voice, and more so on specific words."
The comparison he reaches for is an electric keyboard. There is a wheel on the left hand side that bends a note up or down while you hold it, and the note is still the note, it has just moved. A voice does the same thing to a word.
The part worth sitting with is that you already do this. He makes the point that we modulate unconsciously in day to day life. It tends to stop the moment a script appears in front of you, which is the premise the whole episode is built on.
What does inflection actually sound like?
At 1:58 he reads the show's own opening line completely flat. At 2:17 he reads the identical line again, bending up through the middle and down on the last few words. Same words, same speaker, seconds apart. It is worth using the player above for those forty seconds, because this is the one part of the subject that does not survive being written down.
The downward bend at the end is doing a specific job. It tells the listener the sentence has finished. Skip it and you leave every line hanging, so the listener never gets a clean break and has to work out for themselves where one idea stops and the next starts.
Where do you put inflection in a script?
His answer is that you mark it before you read it, not while you are reading it. Commas and full stops are the obvious ones and they carry most of the work. Beyond that he capitalises the words he wants pushed and changes their colour so they are visible at teleprompter speed.
Pauses belong in the same category. He raises them at 4:05 as a way of adding weight to a line and, more usefully, as the thing that crowds out the ums and errs. A pause and a filler word occupy the same gap, and only one of them is doing anything for the listener.
Tone sits alongside this and is a separate lever again, which we have written up in how adjusting your tone holds attention, and pace and energy in how energy keeps viewers watching.
How much inflection is too much?
"Don't try and emphasize every single word. Otherwise, it's going to sound clunky and really weird."
His working rule is roughly one comma and one full stop per sentence, sometimes more, used sparingly. Emphasise everything and you have emphasised nothing, and it stops sounding like a person talking.
The reason he pushes it at all is at 2:36. Inflection is doing structural work, telling the listener where the content is going, and his blunt point is that they do not care about your script anywhere near as much as you do. The pitch is what keeps them with you while they decide whether to stay.
"It's not what you say or how you say it. It's how people hear it that is ultimately the most important thing."
If this is the part of being on camera that keeps catching you out, it sits under our guide to getting confident on camera.
Key moments
- 0:33 What inflection is, and the keyboard pitch bend he uses to explain it
- 1:07 The trick when you are reading a teleprompter or a script cold
- 1:45 What inflection does to a key word or phrase
- 1:58 The same line read completely flat
- 2:17 The same line again, bending up mid-sentence and down at the end
- 2:36 Why inflection tells a listener where the content is going
- 3:21 Marking a script: commas, full stops, capitals, colour
- 3:38 Why emphasising every word makes it clunky
- 4:05 Pauses, and what they do to the ums and errs
- 4:21 How you said it against how they heard it
Frequently asked questions
What is inflection in speech?
Inflection is the modulation of pitch in your voice, and it lands hardest on specific words. Chris Schwager compares it to the pitch bend wheel on an electric keyboard: the note is still the note, it has just moved. You already do it unconsciously in conversation. It tends to disappear the moment a script appears in front of you.
What does inflection sound like in practice?
At 1:58 in the episode Chris reads the show's opening line completely flat. At 2:17 he reads the identical line again, bending the pitch up through the middle and down on the last few words. Same words, same speaker, seconds apart. It is the one part of the subject that does not survive being written down.
How does inflection affect a spoken message?
It does structural work. Pitch tells the listener where the content is going and signals what is coming next. A downward bend at the end of a sentence tells them the thought is finished. Without it every line hangs, and the listener has to work out for themselves where one idea stops and the next starts.
How do you speak with inflection when reading a script?
Mark it before you read it, not while you are reading it. Commas and full stops carry most of the work. Chris also capitalises the words he wants pushed and changes their colour so they are visible at teleprompter speed. Keep it sparing, roughly one comma and one full stop a sentence, because emphasising every word sounds clunky.
Full transcript
Episode 108 of Video Made Simple, recorded May 2022.
Read the full transcript
Chris Schwager 0:03
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication. I'm your host, Chris Schwager. And if you find people drifting off when you present your script that maybe that's because you're unsure how to read and present your script with some love, baby. So here's a video presentation tip that will get people listening, keep you interesting with a rockstar performance guaranteed to work and it's all about inflection.
0:33
Inflection, what's that? Inflection is the modulation of intonation, or pitch in the voice, and more so on specific words. So, for example, I would pitch up, that would be modulation, it's where you're, if you're familiar with a keyboard or piano keyboard on the little dial on the electric keyboard on the left hand side there, if you bend that more on does that to the sound of the of the keys (pitching sound), that is modulation, we do it unconsciously in our day to day lives.
1:07
And the trick when you're reading a teleprompter or reading a script for the first time is to give it some love, from time to time, because that's the way our ha ha we like it. We as humans, as viewers, recipients of what you're saying we are pretty smart at receiving the information. And so it's your agenda while orchestrating your script to make sure that you hit all those inflection points accurately. Not too many times. But just in specific areas that can really assist in people being able to understand what you're saying.
1:45
Inflection allows you to emphasize key words and phrases along with emotions, and helps convey your exact meaning to the audience. So here's an example with no inflection for instance.
1:58
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication versus something with inflection on I'm going to use a couple of the pauses, you'll hear me through the pauses, and the full stop where I'm bending words up. And I'm going to bend that down right at the end. Let's have a listen.
2:17
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication. So you can hear quite clearly I would bend up in part of the middle of the script there and in downward inflection at the end. And that indicates to people that that's the end of that sentence.
2:36
Inflection has a big role in subliminally if you like telling people what's coming up what's happening, where the content is going. So it provides structure, and everybody needs that structure. What a lot of people don't realize is just them blurting out in their script on camera is going to be like Bible to the recipient. Well, it's not, you know, you've got to take for granted that they don't care as much as you do about what's written in the script, they don't care about as much as you do, about the way that's presented, or the content, right? So just assume that they really don't care. And if you go with that theory, you know, you can have the best chance at really trying to push this as hard as you can, because it's so important that you get people to listen to you.
3:21
Nowadays, in this current client, use visual cues that can be placed in the script to help the audience understand the intent of what you're saying. So commas and full stops are classic, highlight things in red if you need to capitalize your words, so that you know to push those a little bit harder than the others.
3:38
Now you can't just go and jam this into a paragraph and just expect that it's going to sound right, you've just got to use it sparingly, right. So a sentence would have one comma and one full stop. For instance, sometimes we'd have more, but just use it sparingly. Don't try and emphasize every single word. Otherwise, it's going to sound clunky and really weird. So comments, full stops, capitalization, changing the color of words. These all these tips will help guide you to emphasize those areas and help clarify the message for your audience.
4:05
Pauses can also help with inflection adding dramatic effect and avoiding the uhms and errs and all those filler words. Sometimes they creep into my vocabulary from time to time. We're all guilty of it. And obviously removing those in your delivery is also really, really important.
4:21
People will hang on to your every word and understand your presentation better when you start to orchestrate the inflection properly. It's not what you say or how you say it. It's how people hear it that is ultimately the most important thing.
4:37
If you want more personalized coaching around this then be sure to like, share, and leave a comment and don't forget to subscribe to this channel where we will give you regular Video Made Simple ideas every single week to present your videos like a pro. That's all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening and have a great week.
If people drift off while you are reading a script, the script is rarely what went wrong. Book a call and we will listen to a piece of your delivery and tell you where the pitch has gone flat.
