> You don’t need notes or a script, you just need appropriate practice.

Especially inexperienced speakers should prepare notes or script to give it a structure and transmission from topic to topic.

Else one quickly ends up with a talk like "uh, now what's on this slide, oh, yeah" which takes out any flow and doesn't present a good flow of thought.

How much those notes are used and how much one can deviate makes the expert. But the better talks are well prepared.

You need to know what you want to talk about. What the key points are.

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jcattle 5 days ago | parent [-]

Agree, but then throw away (or only have them as backup) the notes during the actual talk. Find the sweetspot where you've practiced enough that you remember all the content and how the different parts flow into each other but haven't yet memorized your script entirely.

	▲	monocularvision 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I once read a book that could have been a pamphlet or maybe a paragraph that boiled down to “Don’t have a script you memorize, but do practice over and over and over and over and over until you feel entirely comfortable with the material”. This made an enormous difference in my ability to give talks.