timed-talklisted

# Timed talk A talk with a fixed slot is not a document that happens to be spoken. The clock is the design constraint, and it binds before content, structure or visuals do. Three ideas carry the whole skill: - **The script is the deliverable.** Slides are the visual aid. Write the words first. - **The budget is arithmetic, not judgement.** Words ÷ rate = minutes. Compute it, then measure the draft against it. - **Cut by design, not by acceleration.** Mark what can be dropped before you need to drop it. ## Time arithmetic Do this before writing a word, and show the numbers. - Delivery rate under stress: **130 words per minute**. Nervous speakers accelerate; planning above 140 is planning to be unintelligible. - **Target 90% of the slot.** Fifteen minutes means a 13.5-minute script. The buffer absorbs a slow start, a projector fumble, and one lost thread. - 13.5 min × 130 wpm ≈ **1,750 words**. - **One slide per 50–70 seconds.** A 15-minute talk is 12–16 slides, not 30. Write the per-slide word budget into a table before drafting. **Measure, never estimate.** A word count you eyeballed will be wrong, and the error runs to whole minutes — long enough to lose the ending. `scripts/check_timing.py` reads the script and reports actual counts per slide and overall. Run it after every substantive edit, and report what it returned rather than what you expected. ## Script convention The spoken words live in the script file as blockquote lines, which is what `check_timing