How to write a script for a teleprompter
A script for a teleprompter is read aloud, once, at the speed of speech, by someone who is also trying to look at a lens. The viewer hears each sentence one time, and you get one glance at it. Newsrooms have been writing for that situation since radio, and most of the rules below come from their guides.
Write it the way you would say it
Say a sentence out loud first, then write down what you said. Spoken sentences are shorter than written ones, and they use plainer verbs. The University of Florida’s guide to news writing for television and radio keeps sentences to 20 words or fewer, because the announcer has to breathe.
- One idea per sentence. If a comma is holding two ideas together, make it two sentences.
- Use contractions wherever you would say them: “it’s”, “we’ll”, “don’t”.
- Cut the words nobody says aloud, like “aforementioned” or “in order to”.
Then read the whole script aloud before you record. The University of Florida pharmacy college’s video team gives the same advice in its teleprompter guide: read it aloud to check that it flows. Every place you stumble is a sentence to rewrite.
Numbers, names and short forms, written as you say them
A number on a page can be read twice. A number on a prompter has to work the first time. NPR’s training team points out that numbers make listeners do maths, and that heard numbers are easily missed. So use fewer of them, round the ones that need not be exact, and write the rest the way you will say them.
| On the page | In the script | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 37% | more than a third | A rounded figure lands in one hearing |
| 1,250,000 | one and a quarter million | Nobody has to count the digits |
| 18 months | a year and a half | Easier to hear |
| U.S. | U-S | The hyphen says “letters, one at a time” |
| e.g. | for example | It is what you would say anyway |
| & | and | A symbol is one more thing to decode |
| Worcester | Worcester (WUSS-ter) | A pronouncer, with the stressed syllable in capitals |
The UF guide spells out one to eleven, uses figures from 12 to 999, and writes bigger numbers as a figure and a word, like 33-thousand. It hyphenates initials that are said letter by letter, such as U-S and U-N. For names, NPR writes a pronouncer after any name the reader might stumble on, with the stressed syllable in capitals. Do the same for product names and colleagues’ surnames. The middle of a take is a bad time to find out you are not sure how to say one.
Normal capitals, not all caps
Broadcast scripts used to be typed in capitals. The UF guide calls that the older practice and says scripts are now typed in upper and lower case. The Described and Captioned Media Program’s guidelines for captions, which are also read at the speed of speech, prefer mixed case too.
The research is less one-sided than the style guides. In a 2007 study by Arditi and Cho, capitals were read faster than mixed case at a small size, twice the smallest the reader could make out, and the advantage disappeared at larger sizes. So capitals help only when the text is near the edge of what you can read, and bigger text is the better fix for that. At a comfortable size ordinary sentence case reads just as fast, and it keeps the capitals that tell you a word is a name.
Paragraphs, pauses and line breaks
On a prompter, the text size and the column width decide where each line ends. What you control is the paragraph. Start a new one where the thought changes, and resist leaving empty lines as pauses. On a prompter that scrolls at a set speed, an empty line is only a stretch of screen with nothing to read, and the pharmacy video team asks presenters to keep related points in one paragraph for that reason: gaps break the flow for the reader and the operator.
If you break a long sentence across lines yourself, the caption guidelines above have a good rule. Break where speech naturally pauses, and not straight after a conjunction like “and” or “but”.
Mark the delivery, lightly
A few cues earn their place. The pharmacy video team asks for the slide number at the start of each section, so the speaker knows when to move on. A note to pause before the line that matters is the other one worth having. Put each cue on its own line in square brackets, so you do not read it out by mistake, and keep them rare: every cue is something on the screen you have to read and not say.
Time it, then cut it
Length is the number of words divided by your pace. For reference, a 2019 review of 77 studies puts adults reading aloud at 183 words a minute on average, and audiobook narrators record about 9,300 words an hour, which is 155 a minute with the pauses in. Your own number is the one that counts, and the speed guide shows how to time it in about two minutes. Then cut to fit. Start with the warm-up sentence at the top, then any sentence that repeats the one before it.
A before and after
Here is a paragraph written for the page:
Our new scheduling feature, which we launched in March after eighteen months of development and extensive user testing, enables teams of up to 250 people to coordinate meetings across 14 time zones, reducing the average time spent on scheduling by 37%.
And here it is written to be said:
We launched a new scheduling feature in March. It took a year and a half to build and test. It lets a team of up to 250 people find a meeting time across 14 time zones. On average, it cuts the time spent on scheduling by more than a third.
What changed:
- One sentence of 41 words became four, the longest of them 17 words. Each holds one idea and ends where you can breathe.
- “Eighteen months” became “a year and a half”, and “37%” became “more than a third”. The 250 and the 14 stayed exact, because they are the facts the paragraph is there to give.
- “Enables” and “coordinate meetings” became “lets” and “find a meeting time”: plain verbs for a plain action.
- “Extensive” went, because it told the listener nothing.
Where Wispim fits
Wispim, the iPhone teleprompter this site is about, takes a script by pasting, which is free, and Pro adds import from TXT, Markdown, PDF, DOCX and RTF. Text size is kept per script, and line spacing and font weight are in the app’s settings. In Voice mode the script follows the words you say and waits when you pause; how the following works covers where recognition runs. To try a script before you record, paste it into the online teleprompter on this site and run it at the pace you timed.
Questions
Should a teleprompter script be in all caps?
Usually not. Broadcast scripts have moved to upper and lower case, and caption guidelines prefer it. The study that found capitals faster found it only at a small text size; at a comfortable size the difference went away.
How many words should go on each line?
Your text size and column width decide that, so set those for your distance first. Keep the column narrow enough that each line can be taken in at a glance, so your eyes do not sweep from side to side.
How long should a teleprompter script be?
The minutes you have, times the words you speak in a minute. At 150 words a minute, a one-minute video takes about 150 words and a five-minute talk about 750. Time yourself for the real figure.
Should I write numbers as words or digits?
The broadcast convention in the UF guide is words for one to eleven, figures from 12 to 999, and a figure and a word above that, like 33-thousand. Round any number that does not have to be exact.
Should I use bullet points instead of a full script?
It depends on how much the wording matters. The pharmacy video team finds that most of the presenters it records prefer to talk around slide bullets, which usually gives a more natural flow and fewer takes. Write it out in full when the exact words count, or when the video has to fit a set length.