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IT’S THE WAY
YOU SAY IT
IT’S THE WAY
YOU SAY IT
Becoming Articulate,
Well-Spoken, and Clear
CAROL A. FLEMING, PhD
It’s the Way You Say It
Copyright © 2013 by Carol A. Fleming, PhD
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Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1: Assessing Your Voice
Chapter 2: Resolving Specific Problems
Fast Talkers
Loud Talkers
Soft Talkers
Raspy Talkers
High Talkers
Indecisive Talkers
Staccato Talkers
Breathy Talkers
Fading Talkers
Chapter 3: Developing a Dynamic Voice
Expressing Vocal Variety
Getting Emphatic
Developing the Resonant Voice
Getting It Pitch Perfect
Chapter 4: Becoming Well-Spoken
Using the Simple Declarative Sentence
Words Fail Me!
Speaking Your Mind Effectively
Offering a Gracious Response
I Wanna Be Articulate!
Chapter 5: Unifying Your Verbal and Nonverbal
Messages
Carrying Yourself with Confidence
How You Look When You Talk
Making Eye Contact

advance their careers because of their personal
discomfort in just speaking to others.
Perhaps you are one of these people. If so, here
is something you should know: many of the fluent,
comfortable, “natural born” speakers that you hear
conversing or presenting were actually terrified
people who have found their way to success
through appropriate training and practice.
Perhaps you can be one of those people.
In the first edition of It’s the Way You Say It, I
told the stories of my clients who were trying to
deal with their personal communication issues. My
readers have let me know that these stories were
very important in helping them identify their own
concerns and in seeing that there are actually ways
of developing into more confident communicators.
More stories are pouring in from around the world
by phone and e-mail (a daunting example: “Dr.
Fleming, I love my wife dearly, but I cannot stand
the sound of her voice!”). So I am grateful indeed
for this opportunity to include some of these stories
in this revised edition of my book.
I am finding that the possibility of a new hope is
the constant element in my clients and readers
alike. They simply did not realize that there were
things to know and do that would help them change
and make a tremendous difference in their lives.
Many self-help authors have told me that they
write their books in order to “drive people to their
website,” “to book more speaking engagements,”

forever on the outside of life. I wanted my life to
matter, and helping people to learn to communicate
… now that was worth life’s labor. I went to
college and ended in the graduate program in
speech-language pathology at Northwestern
University in Illinois. It was there that I learned
that the child I just described was made flaccid by
hypotonic cerebral palsy.
During my clinical practice as a speech
pathologist, I found myself working with another
young person with cerebral palsy at the hospital
speech clinic. She was a teenage girl, somewhat
developmentally delayed and severely spastic. She
had difficulty keeping her mouth closed—
something important in making certain speech
sounds and in eating and looking OK. We had
worked together for a number of weeks and had
found how to position her wildly spastic body for
the greatest degree of calm and control, how to get
her jaw into alignment, and with tactile stimulation
to the lips, how to help her to close her lips for as
long as possible. This posture was like stacking a
house of cards: you held your breath as she
struggled to maintain the posture and control, feel
her lips together, and breathe through her nose.
This was the therapy goal.
And then some doctor would stride by, stopping
to muss her hair and say in a jolly, jolly voice,
“Christine, are you still my favorite girlfriend?”
And Christine would lose all control and

doctors scared of old doctors; foreign born-
personnel who could not make themselves
understood. The communication of maturity and
power, as displayed by the voice and by nonverbal
means, was a frequent issue.
One young doctor in training stands out in my
memory: he had all of these issues. Kim came from
a culture that did not support assertiveness in
young people, and he never had the advantage of
any speech help in learning English—for him, it
was catch-as-catch can. He had no friends or
support community. He was doing his interning
under the eagle eye of a stern taskmaster (referred
to as a sadistic something else behind his back).
Kim was terrified, and since his family and
church had invested everything they had in his
education, failure was not an option.
I turned on the recorder and asked Kim what he
thought of his speech, voice, language, and general
communication concerns. I learned the baggage that
he brought into the room with him, right or wrong,
and formed a pretty good idea of personal insight
and motivation. What he knew were the critical
comments he had heard, and what he felt was
despair. He was currently being defeated by the
articulation demands of the word “irregularity.”
I played the recording of our interview and
asked him to reevaluate the speech-voice-language
as he heard it on the tape and to compare that with
his initial evaluation. From this I would know how

career.
These early cases showed me that in a private
practice, I could now offer the kind of intervention
and holistic treatment I could not offer in a clinical
setting because we had a direct fee-for-service
arrangement and medical insurance was not
involved. I learned that these people from the
general and “normal” public were handicapped in
their career development and that they had
nowhere else to go for help. This was memorably
illustrated by a woman in the hospital typing pool
who grabbed my sleeve one day and said, “Dr.
Fleming, I once worked in an office and there was
an opening for a manager; I tried for it, but the boss
said my voice was too airy-fairy for the promotion
.… We didn’t have people like you back then.” I
knew I was in the right place doing the right thing.
This work has led to unimagined personal
rewards from people who taught me a thing or two
about character and talent and determination. You
will meet some of them in this book, but first let
me tell you about Elaine, who will humble us all
with her courage.
I learned from her phone call that Elaine wanted
to pursue another job in human resources in Silicon
Valley. She had previously headed HR in a major
San Francisco company for twenty years, but the
department was to be closed. Elaine had an
appropriate PhD and was highly thought of at her
present company, but she told me that the

amber jewelry to make her big brown eyes light up
her face, a more fitted seafoam green outfit, and
our secret plan. She told the recruiter that she had
worked with a voice consultant and was now
ready to try out for the job.
Applicants for the human resources leadership
position were to present a twenty-minute talk on
some aspect of that field. Elaine chose “diversity,”
and we went to work on her presentation. She
knew her professional stuff, of course, but I offered
an opening that I thought would command the kind
of fresh respect she needed and switch their
attention from her crippled leg to her strength of
character. She was astonished at my plan but
agreed to do whatever it would take. Here is the
opening of her talk:
(Standing in front of the group, take your
time and make eye contact til they’ve
settled down.)
“How old were you when you first found
that you were different from other
children?”
(Long pause, let them think.)
“Well, I was 5 years old when I saw that
they didn’t look like this.”
(Hike your pant leg up to your thigh and
just stand there, making them look at your
leg and shoe. Don’t rush, make eye contact.
Now, go on to your presentation.)
Elaine turned down this job offer to take a

people in every line of work. While your expertise
and skills are, of course, essential, it is your
personal verbal communication that transmits your
expertise and confidence to other people. While
many books out there on communication will tell
you what to say, few address how to say it, and
even fewer will help you learn how to work
specifically with your speech and your voice.
I’ve been working with people on refining the
sound of their voices for over thirty years. As a
speech and language pathologist, I use the
education and skills developed for the clinic and
apply them to the more subtle needs of the business
and professional world. While others may offer
public speaking training, speech therapy, or theater
skills, I take a holistic approach, helping people
address any concerns they may have about the
impression they make by the way they
communicate both verbally and nonverbally. The
reason this approach succeeds is that body, words,
and voice must ideally communicate the same thing
at the same time for the speaker to come across as
professional, trustworthy, and appealing.
I’ve found that virtually everyone has some
aspect of their speech about which they feel
insecure or on which others have commented.
People come into my office feeling nervous, and
they always ask, “Can I really change my voice?”
The answer I offer them is, “You absolutely can—
with instruction and practice.” In this book, I’ve