How long is a 2000-word speech?

The shortest slot it fits, untouched

Before working out what to cut, it is worth knowing whether you need to. At each of our three measured paces, this is the smallest slot on the list that a 2,000-word script fits into with no trimming at all:

Those are script-only figures. They assume the slot is entirely yours, which it almost never is.

What comes out, slot by slot

Each block below takes one slot length and asks the same question at each pace: how many words fit, and how many of your 2,000 have to go. A negative cut is not shown because there is no such thing — where the script already fits, the row says so.

Read down a column and the pattern is stark: the same script needs a different edit depending on a variable you have not measured. The twelve-minute slot is the clearest case. A deliberate speaker at 140 wpm has to lose 320 words — 16% of the draft — a speaker at the median 165 wpm loses only 20, and a brisk one at 185 wpm keeps every word. Same script, same slot, three different edits. That is the entire argument for measuring your own rate before cutting anything.

Above about fifteen minutes the question stops being interesting: every pace in the table fits 2,000 words into a fifteen-minute slot with room to spare, so the constraint moves from your script to whatever else the session contains.

Talks of this length that we actually timed

Two thousand words is a normal length for a substantial talk. 19 of the 39 deliveries in our measured set had transcripts at or above it:

How to lose ten per cent without losing the argument

At 2,000 words a ten per cent cut is 200 words, which is roughly 1:13 of speaking. Places that reliably hold that much dead weight:

• The setup before the first real sentence. Thanks, housekeeping, an outline of what you are about to say. An audience that can see you does not need an agenda slide read to them.
• Second and third examples. One vivid case beats three sketched ones, and each example you drop is worth around 0:44.
• Hedging. "I think it might be reasonable to suggest that" is nine words for a claim you could make in three. Spoken hedges also make you sound less sure than you are.
• Anything the slide already says. Reading a slide aloud costs full speaking time and adds nothing the room has not already read.
• The recap. At this length the audience has not forgotten your opening. Summarising it back costs a minute you could spend on the close.

Cut in that order, re-time it aloud, and check the number against the calculator rather than against your memory of the last run. Then rehearse against a countdown set to the real slot so the pacing gets trained in.