A key element of voiceover work is reading the script. It’s the job of the voice over artist to take those words and bring them to life to lift the meaning off the page and convey it effectively to the listener whether that is in a TV or radio ad, corporate narration, explainer video or e-learning module.  For the voice artist its a skill that gets learned and honed by experience. The process should be clear enough but what if the script is not that well written? How are we supposed to convey the meaning of the script if we can’t actually tell what the copy-writer meant when they wrote it?

In the days before I mostly worked in my own studio I would encounter situations where I’d be in the voice over booth in some expensive studio reading a script for a corporate project. There would be a group of people from the client present. I would get just a few paragraphs into the read only for someone from the client to say something along the lines of “that’s not right” or “we can’t say that” or “that sounds wrong”.

The script would have been signed off of course but prior to the studio session no one would have actually read it out loud at any point – as soon as I started to do so they could hear what was wrong.  Then the script would have to be changed. There would be long discussions over the new wording and invariably someone more important had to be rung up to sign off the changes – all the while the studio clock would be ticking and hourly charges would be racking up. There can be similar problems with radio ads where the copy writer has not read the words aloud to see if they will all fit into the 30 second ad without sounding like you are trying to break some “maximum number of words spoken in 30 seconds” competition.

These days I sometimes get a similar experience from some scripts where the writer of it has little of no understanding of the use, or purpose, of punctuation. You can get paragraph long sentences that only make sense if I can work out where the commas should be indicating where the sub-clauses are – or where the full stops probably should be to break the paragraph into shorter readable sentences.

Another bugbear is where the producer, perhaps of a training module, wants the VO to sound “conversational” or “like you are having a chat to a mate at work”  – but gives you a script full of language, vocabulary and sentences you would never say out loud, let alone sound “conversational” saying.

The US voice over coach Nancy Wolfson (left) has some great things to say about this kind of thing in a video here

I was prompted onto this train of thought by a blog post by US voice artist and newscaster Dave Courvoisier entitled “Yes it does still matter …in voiceover”.  In particular I liked this quote:

“Let me ask you this; how many times have you noticed, and complained to yourself, or even were somewhat confused by misspellings or bad punctuation in the copy you’ve been sent to voice?  It matters.  When you see sloppy copy, you begin to wonder about the copywriter, yes, but you might even begin to call into question the efficacy of the entire project.”

Actually his wider point is about making sure that, as a professional voice over, everything you send out or produce on-line is well written and properly spelled. It provides positive reinforcement to your brand.
Having just had a go at copy writers I’m now going to take Dave’s suggestion and double check the grammar and spelling on this website!
Dave also references a blog post by Megan Krause on the topic of good grammar called “Yes good grammar is (still) important and here’s why” – it’s well worth a read too.