You have almost certainly listened to someone reciting a speech and found it flat, uninspiring, even disingenuous.

This often happens in the public sphere, especially when politics are involved.

What's to be said is often vetted, edited, and rehashed multiple times by multiple people. This is understandable. A slip of the tongue can cause severe backlash.

There are, of course, brilliant speechwriters who work with the same speaker for long periods of time and produce remarkable speeches for them. These people, sadly, are few and far between.

Many written speeches don't translate well when spoken, because they were written for the eye, and not for the ear.

I'm not saying that speakers should stop hiring speechwriters, just that, if they do, they should be the ones in charge of the final "version", so that they sound like themselves.

And make our listening lives a little bit livelier.