Everyone on a video call can tell when you are reading. The tell is not the reading itself — it is the eye movement. Your gaze slides to the corner of the screen, comes back, slides away again, and the person watching reads that as evasion even when you are simply well prepared.
The fix is mechanical rather than a matter of skill: move the words to where the camera already is. This guide covers exactly how to do that on Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, including the part most people get wrong — keeping the prompter invisible when you share your screen.
Why notes beside the camera work better than notes on paper
A webcam sits at the top edge of your screen. Anything you read that is not directly beneath it forces your eyes off-axis, and the further off-axis, the more obvious it becomes. Paper notes on the desk are the worst case: they drop your gaze forty-five degrees and take your whole head with it.
A narrow prompter strip immediately under the lens keeps your eyes within a few degrees of the camera. At that distance the movement reads as normal thinking rather than reading, which is the entire goal. You are not trying to hide that you prepared — you are trying to stop good preparation from looking like evasion.
Setting it up: five minutes, once
- Open the teleprompter in its own browser window, not a tab beside your call.
- Drag the window to the top of your screen, directly beneath your webcam.
- Resize it into a narrow horizontal strip — wide enough to read, short enough that your eyes barely travel vertically.
- Set the font size smaller than you would for camera work: 32–48 px suits a window this close to your face.
- Set the pace to 120–140 words per minute — the prompter shows the pace it is actually delivering next to the speed slider. Call delivery should sound like thinking, not reciting.
- Paste your script and leave it paused. Press Space only when you reach a part you actually want to read.
Keeping it private when you share your screen
This is where prepared people get caught out. Every major meeting app offers a choice between sharing your entire screen and sharing one specific window or tab. Share the whole screen and your prompter goes out with it.
In Zoom, choose the specific application window from the share dialogue rather than the Desktop tile. In Google Meet, pick "A window" or "A tab" instead of "Your entire screen". In Microsoft Teams, select the individual window under the share tray rather than the full desktop. In all three, the prompter window then never enters the stream, even though it is visibly on your monitor.
If you present from slides regularly, get in the habit of sharing the slide application window specifically. It protects your prompter, your notifications and your other tabs in one move.
A second screen is better, if you have one
A tablet or second monitor placed just under your webcam beats a window on the same screen, for one reason: nothing you do on your main display can accidentally reveal it. Screen sharing cannot capture a device that is not connected to the call at all.
It also lets you use a larger font, which means each line is a single glance rather than a scan. If you take a lot of calls where you present, a cheap tablet on a small stand under the monitor is the highest-value upgrade available.
What to actually put in the script
Less than you think. Full sentences read out word for word sound recited, and on a call that is worse than stumbling. The version that works is a skeleton: your opening line written out in full, then three or four short prompts, then the closing ask.
The opening line matters because that is where nerves hit hardest and where a fumble costs the most attention. The closing ask matters because it is the thing people most often soften into vagueness when improvising. Everything in between you already know — you just need to be reminded of the order.
Voice mode for longer calls
On a call that runs long, timed scrolling becomes a second thing to manage. Voice-following scroll removes that: the script advances as you speak and waits when you stop, so a question from someone else does not leave you thirty lines behind.
It needs Chrome, Edge or Safari and microphone permission. Worth knowing before you rely on it: while the script matching happens in your browser, most browsers send the audio to their own speech-recognition service to transcribe it. If your call is confidential enough that this matters, leave voice mode off and scroll manually — everything else works without it.