What is the Average Speaking Rate?


A long-time reader asks:

What’s the average speaking rate? Is it better to speak faster or is is better to speak slower?

In this article, we answer these questions and look at the factors which influence your speaking rate, a critical component of your delivery.

Vocal Delivery Article Series

How to calculate your speaking rate

The most common way to express one’s speaking rate is in words per minute (wpm). To calculate this, simply take the total number of words spoken and divide by the number of minutes it took you to speak them.

Speaking Rate (wpm) = Total words / # of minutes

Another way to measure speaking rate is in syllables per minute (spm):

Speaking Rate (spm) = Total syllables / # of minutes

Why syllables per minute? Not all words are equal. Consider these two sentences:

  1. Modern readability tests are designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. (17 words; 41 syllables)
  2. Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. (17 words; 19 syllables)

If you were to speak these two sentences at the same rate in words per minute, the first passage would seem considerably faster because you are saying more.

Despite the sensibility of using syllables/minute, the words/minute measure is more commonly used, because it is generally easier to calculate.

How to determine your speaking rate

A really quick estimate of your speaking rate can be obtained by timing yourself while reading a selection of text with a known word count. Then, simply calculate using the method above.

But, this is not really your speaking rate. It’s your reading rate. Even if you read out loud, it’s not the same thing as a speaking rate.

The best way to determine your speaking rate is to time yourself delivering a real speech with a real audience. (Video helps — you can count your words from it too.)

What is the average speaking rate?

The average speaking rate will vary across languages and situations. But, rather than dodging the question entirely, let’s come up an estimate given a fairly narrow speaking situation — TED talks — which we often study in Six Minutes speech critiques.

I analyzed 9 TED talks which have been critiqued on Six Minutes. These talks ranged from just under 7 minutes in length to just under 20 minutes. Some speakers used visuals, some did not. Their topics were widely variable. [Click the links in the table below to view these speeches and read the critiques. Note that the Steve Jobs talk was not delivered at a TED conference, but is included on the TED website.]

Speaker Speaking Rate (words/minute)
Al Gore 133
Becky Blanton 153
Dan Pink 155
Steve Jobs 158
Hans Rosling 161
Majora Carter 167
Ken Robinson 168
Elizabeth Gilbert 187
Jacqueline Novogratz 188
  • For these 9 talks, the average speaking rate is 163 words per minute.
  • Two thirds of the talks are clustered in a narrow range between 153 and 168 words per minute.
  • Remember that this average and range do not necessarily apply to all speaking situations.

One can also calculate the speaking rate for the 9 TED talks in syllables per minute, and these results are shown below, sorted in the same order as in the words/minute chart above.

  • The most notable difference using the syllables/minute measure is that of Majora Carter. She has a much higher syllables/word count (1.62) compared to the others, which all fall between 1.43 and 1.54. More frequent use of longer words is one factor which contributes to my perception that she’s talking too fast.

What influences your overall speaking rate?

There are many factors which influence your overall speaking rate:

  • Your normal speaking rate
    This is a product of your birth, your culture, and your history (family, profession, etc.) Some people talk faster. Some people talk slower. Neither is inherently good or bad.
  • Nervousness and stress
    Speaking under pressure tends to make you speak faster. I am not immune to this trait. If I’m speaking with notes of any kind, I’ll often write “SLOW DOWN” in red ink in the margin as a reminder.
  • Mental fatigue
    If you are tired, you will tend to speak slower. You’ll also tend to make more mistakes which further slows your effective speaking rate.
  • Complexity of the words
    If you’re measuring speaking rate in words per minute, then longer words will usually slow down your speaking rate.
  • Complexity of content
    Longer sentences and more complex speech content means more pauses are necessary, and this will slow down your speaking rate, too. This is desirable because it helps your audience — they need more time to mentally process longer sentences and more complex content. However, it would help them more to simplify your content and shorten your sentences.
  • Verbal pauses
    Insertion of natural pauses in your verbal delivery will slow your speaking rate, but the gains in understandability are worth it!
  • Extra pauses induced by you
    Every time you stop to checking your notes, think to search for a word, show a prop or slide, or demonstrate something, your speaking rate drops. Often, the benefits of doing these things outweighs the drawbacks. [Some of these pauses can be reduced by more thorough preparation.]
  • Extra pauses induced by your audience
    When your audience applauds or laughs, this slows you down too. Larger audiences tend to induce larger delays.
  • Extra pauses induced by the environment
    These are harder to predict, but you should allow for them. For example, loud noises outside the room or other distractions may force you to pause, or repeat yourself.

All but the last two factors are completely within your control, and even those last two factors can be predicted somewhat.

Is it better to speak faster or is is better to speak slower?

It depends, but if you are anywhere close to the range of the speakers analyzed above (133 to 188 words/minute), you’re fine.

Generally, slower is more intelligible than faster speech. Appropriate pauses allow your audience time to digest what you’ve said and begin to process it. However, instead of worrying too much about your numerical speaking rate, it probably would be better to focus on improving your clarity and lowering the complexity of your language.

  • Clarity: Good enunciation, sharp pronunciation, and proper stresses will produce clear language and make it easy for your audience to hear each word.
  • Complexity: By simplifying words and simplifying your sentences by eliminating unnecessary words, you become much more understandable.
Vocal Delivery Article Series

Vary your speaking rate!

No matter what your average speaking rate is over the entire speech, you should always vary it within a speech. Don’t deliver sentence after sentence at the same exact rate. Varying your speech rate adds life to your vocal delivery, and allows you to convey both meaning and emotional content.

For example, you can speak a little faster to convey excitement, or a little slower to reflect sadness or confusion.

Final Thoughts

I know very few people who speak considerably too slow, but many who speak too fast. Because of the common tendency to put too much content into our presentations, we tend to speak at a blazing speed to get through it all. So, in general, slow down!

Like many delivery characteristics, the best way to be aware of whether you are doing it well is to solicit feedback. Ask trusted audience members whether your pace was too slow, too fast, or just right.

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Comments icon27 Comments

  1. Claire Duffy says:

    Great post Andrew. I love the analysis. Research shows that Australians generally speak slower than other english speakers, and I recently (http://wp.me/p2k3hy-Ev) suggested that we speak around 100 wpm. Quite a difference! Despite this, I have a flash card that I take into every high school speech class and I use it a LOT. It says “slow down”.

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      Fascinating! I wasn’t aware of the speaking rate difference in Australians. Do you have a reference to the research handy?

      1. jameela says:

        it is said that the normalspeaking rate is 140_160 word per minute

  2. Thanks for this post Andrew. I think it also depends on the nature of the speech. My experience in Toastmasters tells me that, when telling stories and trying to convey emotion, I’ll speak much slower than when speaking about plain facts and figures. Is this your case as well?

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      Sebastian:

      Yes, it certainly depends on the nature of the overall speech and, as you have pointed out, on the nature of what you are presenting at a given time within the speech.

      I agree that emotional content and stories (which have more dramatic pauses) tend to be delivered slower than factual details, but even that isn’t a hard rule.

  3. Kate Peters says:

    Andrew, As always I appreciate your thoroughness and your practical approach to dealing with the challenges of public speaking. I agree with this article and thank you for your approach using syllables rather than words to assess rate of speech. One thought, another situation affecting ROS is the fact that people may not practice speaking at the slower pace often enough. This is where it is helpful to read a piece aloud that has the desired number of words in it (or syllables) and time yourself to be able to read it at the correct pace. If you do that often enough, you get the “feel” of that pace and can more easily duplicate it under pressure. And you’ll also notice that when you slow down you are more able to add nuances and variety, making the slower pace actually MORE interesting than the faster one, in case you are worried about boring people when speaking more slowly.

  4. Craig Hadden says:

    Up to now, I’ve never seen syllables used to express speaking speed, but it makes such sense – as the comparison of sentences with the same word count but vastly different syllable counts clearly shows in this post.

    A while ago, I published a piece about using fewer syllables when speaking. It lists 14 terms that people often use when speaking (or writing), and it gives low-syllable equivalents (up to 80% shorter) for each term:
    http://remotepossibilities.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/minimise-blur-firstframework-part-1m/#bb3

    If you make simple changes like those, you can avoid rushing, and your audience can absorb your message far better.

    Here’s another tip related to speaking rate, which I’ve found really handy when listening to recorded speeches or webinars: By using Windows Media Player (or a similar tool), you can play recordings slower or faster than normal speed.

    Typically, speakers talk too fast. So you can use Media Player to slow down the recording, and/or you can keep clicking Pause to give yourself time to digest what was just said.

    Conversely, for slow or well-paced speakers, you can play a recording at (say) 150% speed, so for instance you can hear a 1-hour webinar in only 40 minutes. What a timesaver! (I’m in Australia like Claire, above, but the slowest speaker I’ve come across is actually a well-known CEO from the US. In a live speech, the slow speed lets you absorb what he’s saying, but in a recording it can get frustrating unless you speed it up.)

    If your version of Media Player’s like mine, you’ll find the speed control by choosing View > Enhancements > Play Speed Settings. (In Media Player on Windows 7, instead you choose Play > Play Speed, which gives you just 3 speeds to choose from.)

    I hope you find that as handy as I have!

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      Thanks for the tip, Craig. I’ll have to try that out.

  5. Andrew,
    This is extremely helpful for novice public speakers. I am forever being asked how much can I say in a minute? What’s interesting about the numbers for me is that they look so high. Once you allow time for audience reaction and time to pause to let your points sink in, I always find that even the fastest public speakers struggle to get much more than 140 words per minute. 150 tops. It’s our nervous novices that speak at 180.
    I’d be interested to know: Why is it that these experienced hands say so many words? Does their experience mean that they can command an audience’s attention and compress more content into less time? Or would they be better if the slowed down?

    1. Andrew Dlugan says:

      Without a great deal more data, it’s hard to answer your questions. However, I think it is fair to say that these TED speakers are able to deliver at a higher words/minute rate because [1] they are extremely well-prepared, and thus rarely make any verbal slips which would slow them down and [2] the culture of TED talks tends to allow for a pretty high information density.

      As for whether these talks would be better if slowed down, I leave it up to the audience.

    2. Ray says:

      As a trainer of professional actors I can assure you that there seems to be more of a correlation of slower speed with “reading” and faster speed with passion. Perhaps the TED speakers are a bit more passionate about their ideas?

  6. Ray says:

    Wow. I couldn’t disagree more. If a person is aligning operative words then TEMPO has almost no bearing on the speech. If someone is passionate then they are going to speak at a faster rate (SPM), but they will also hit words in such a way as to convey meaning. Anything between 160-210 (wpm) is common in everyday speech. Why should conveying ideas in a “speech” be different?

  7. Maxey says:

    Love your pages! However, please take caution when using the word ” slower”. It is an adjective. When speaking of how something is done, the proper use is ” more slowly”. 😉

  8. Abby says:

    I agree with you SO much that I filed a federal lawsuit asking court and other public officers to SLOWDOWN. My lawsuit is called Ovitsky v. Washington County, etc.
    It’s less about money and more about understanding what people are speaking, for me most of the time it is “too fast,” quite literally. Federal relay types about 60 wpm. Court officers speak 100+ wpm. If I can walk away with one non financial gain, it would be a federal order asking the locals to slow down and also asking FCC to hire faster typists to transcribe calls for deaf. I write for myself, I cannot read 100+ wpm, I can read about 80 wpm and I can hear maybe 60 wpm with pauses and repeats, which is why I use deaf telecom, I need a SLOWDOWN more than I need the visual but after seven years, I’m accustomed to doing both. I am in Oregon, not far from where ye hail from? Au Canada? In any event, thank you for your wonderful article and I appreciate your posting it. I re-posted it on my FaceBook page with a link back to this site.

  9. Hi, Andrew,
    Congratulations for your blog! It’s terrific! I also write about public communication, but I focus on phonetics.
    I’ll keep reading your posts, thanks!!
    Carolina
    (Madrid, Spain)

  10. Miguel Avila says:

    Ray Hull, Ph.D. recommended 124 wpm.

  11. Rashid hussain says:

    That was great to read your research
    Please advise the top 10 speech or speaker in a world

    Many Thanks

  12. Guvier says:

    Nice article, I came here looking to learn what speed I wanted to be able to play guitar at. I was wondering if you might have an article you could direct me to which delves deeper into the mood tone/frequency or as you put it an article that tells me what speed rates convey what sorts of meanings and emotions?

  13. Andrew, thank you!
    One of the 1st training segments of Accent training ( Not “accent reduction” – rather “Accent Addition”) is to train folks how to monitor their speaking rate. We do this by doing an analysis of TED speakers on the # of words per minute ( WPM). The Syllables Per Minute (SPM) analysis that you have done is phenomenal. A person cannot change how they move their speaking/articulator-voice muscles until they can be attuned to and control the speed of their speaking movements. Additionally, they cannot be attuned to how their listeners are responding or understanding if they cannot use effective pauses. Your analysis of the WPM and SPM of top TED speakers helps others to strategically garner specific tactics to be more effective speakers. Again, Thank you!!!

  14. Olga says:

    Thank you for this post Andrew! I learned a lot of details about public speaking while browsing through your blog. It actually inspired me to create an app which estimates the speaker’s speaking rate, pauses, pitch and volume (a digital presentation coach). Now available for free on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quantle/id1241930976 Thanks again for your valuable pages!

    1. qlmgu@163.com says:

      a very good job. I hope you will creat a a android version of the app. Thank you.

  15. Simon says:

    Hi Andrew. Thank you for your very interesting post on speaking rate. I am interested in doing this at a more academic level, in a paper, for instance. Do you have any papers/references on calculating speaking rate? Thank you in advance for your help.

  16. Frikkie Brits says:

    Interesting that the fact of deafness are not being dealt with enough. Some deaf persons (especially older persons) has big difficulties in following newsreaders. It must be remembered that with the years all functions slow down a little bit with extreme cases here and there.Also older persons tend to listen more to radio and tv and find it very difficult in understanding than in the past.I am very fond of news channels but find that some readers (especially women ) are faster readers than their male colleges.To all out there please speak slower!

  17. Sandra Frazier says:

    Do you have DVDs to help with practice sounds

  18. Craig Hadden says:

    Recently I reviewed a video where the speaker talked at 230 wpm! (I linked to this post for comparison with other talks.)

    You might think that’d be WAY too fast, but in that case I think the speaker pulled it off.

    If done well, one benefit of speaking so fast is that it conveys passion for the topic. See what you think…

  19. Andre says:

    The reason why Majora Carter’s spw is so much higher is because she says ‘sustainability’, ‘environmental’ and ‘sustainable development’ a lot.

  20. Andre says:

    You could also say that:
    • the avg wpm of those “2/3 between 153 and 168 wpm” is 160; and that
    • the avg spm of those talks is 274, and 237 amongst without the 3 fast-talking women and slomo Gore.

    Personally, I’m more interested in how fast can people listen. Any clues?

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Hearing | Sherry Chandler — Nov 17th, 2012