Get The Point! A Lesson in Interpreting Punctuation

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Marc Cashman.
Marc Cashman: Hi, this is Marc Cashman and thanks for joining me today. One of the many topics I cover with voice acting students is navigating punctuation marks in copy or text. I make the distinction between copy which are the words and phrases used in advertising or promotion and text, the words spoken in narration.
Punctuation marks can be easy or difficult to navigate for some voice actors depending on their skill and depending upon how good or bad the writer is in using punctuation correctly. While the period, comma, colon and semicolon can be used fluidly, the question mark can be used in dozens of different ways and narrating quotation marks takes a bit of skill and timing, the one punctuation mark that needs to be honored and should never be ignored is the exclamation point. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard voice actors ignore exclamation points and I don’t understand how they miss them. They’re impossible to ignore, there’s no other punctuation mark that makes its presence known as well as the exclamation point.
Granted, copyrighters tend to use them liberally particularly with retail or direct response copy. Do it today! Call Now! But wait, there’s more!
But that’s no excuse to miss them or pretend they’re not there. The writer plays them there on purpose. They didn’t plant themselves on the page by accident but exclamations points are used for just one purpose, to convey excitement and when you see exclamation points in copy, that’s the writer’s way of telling you, “Make this sentence exciting.” An engineer who I worked with who has listened to thousands of voice actors recommends bringing a pocket full of exclamation points the next time you have piece of retail or direct response copy to perform and if they’re not embedded in the copy, liberally sprinkling them over the page.
Sometimes there are sentences which don’t have exclamation points that need them but too many sentences with exclamation points will start sounding silly after a while. Just how much excitement should an exclamation point convey? Well, it needs to be appropriate to the product, the situation and the audience.
Exciting copy for young kids for Hot Wheels is going to be read differently than exciting copy for a casino aimed at adults and there are so many different degrees of excitement. The amount of excitement and projection varies in myriad situations, shouting in a stadium, “All right, a home run!” Or ring side at a boxing match, “Knock them out!” exclaiming, “Happy Birthday!” or “Happy New Year!” at a party. Seeing someone take a fall and exclaiming, “Oh my God!” or accidentally knocking something over and apologizing, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Calling to your kids, “Dinner is ready,” or hailing your neighbor from your porch, “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while!” Then there’s hushed excitement when you lean over to whisper to your friend or relative or a spouse in a opera or a recital, “I’ve been waiting for months to see this!” Confessing to a loved one, “Oh, you are going to love this!” or fighting with them, “You never listen to me!” Sometimes, excitement goes into the realm of terrorized or insanity.
Here’s a tip if you see a lot of exclamation points throughout a spot. Be careful not to get too excited at the beginning. Otherwise, you’ll have nowhere to go but down. You need to ramp the energy up gradually, believable and (paste) out. Plus if you’re being directed in a session, the director will explain the appropriate energy you need to give the exclamation points in the script. Just don’t ignore an exclamation point. Honor it and give it its due. Get the point?
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.
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