And, most of the time, they avoided reciting their talking points.Some of the credit for this belongs to the moderator, Bob Schieffer, a CBS News anchor, who asked serious questions and even, occasionally, upbraided the candidates for not answering them.
In his speech, Mr. Cuomo avoided reciting a roll call of his kin, explaining, "I have so many family members here today, if I start to point them out I'll miss someone, and there'll be a whole family disturbance come the next holiday time".
It can also look a bit over-the-top unless you are engaging in your delivery; avoid simply reciting something learned off-by-heart.
In order to avoid forgetting items, the boy recites his mother's list to himself.
Consider the experiment that Jordan Grafman developed at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (N.I.N.D.S). in Bethesda, Md. It's a driving simulation in which you must avoid errant cars and jaywalkers, all while reciting sequences of numbers called out to you.
The result is a series of glorified bipartisan news conferences, where the major-party candidates merely recite prepackaged sound bites and avoid discussing many important issues.
It was hard to avoid seeing the video posted last week showing local news stations reciting a "must-run" script about fake news from their parent company, Sinclair broadcasting, in eerie synchrony.
During the Ironman swim, while Whitman is trying to avoid getting dunked or kicked, he counts his strokes and recites a poem called The Little Red Hen to keep himself on pace.
"My father is from India," I would recite, phrasing it in such a way as to avoid being mistaken for an American Indian.
During the attack in Bamako, some 80 hostages were reportedly freed after correctly reciting Koranic verses, a method typically used by al-Qaeda to avoid killing Muslims.
