Table Topic Contest Rules

There shall be at least two timers, one of whom shall be provided with a stopwatch by the chief judge. They shall keep the official record of the time of each contestant's presentation.

The timers shall provide green, amber and red warning signals, which shall be clearly visible to the speakers, but not obvious to the audience.

Any sightless contestant may request and must be granted a form of warning signal of his or her own choosing, which may be an audible device; the contestant must provide any special device required for such signal.

Any contestant is disqualified whose presentation time is less than the minimum time or more than the maximum time indicated below. No signal shall be given to indicate that a presentation has gone into overtime.   In the event of technical failure of the signals, a contestant is allowed 30 seconds extra overtime before being disqualified.

Timing will begin with the contestant's first definite verbal or non-verbal communication with the audience. This will usually be the first word uttered by the contestant, but would include any other communication such as sound effects, a staged act by another person, etc.

Following are the timing rules. No more than one signal color may be displayed at any time.

• Speech length is two minutes
• The green signal will be displayed at one minute and remain displayed for 30 seconds
• The amber signal will be displayed at one minute, 30 seconds and remain displayed for 30 seconds
• The red signal will be displayed at two minutes and remain displayed until the speech ends

Rules Index

	Club Rules
	Table Topic Contest Rules
	Evaluation Contest Rules
	Humorous Speech Contest Rules
	International Speech Contest Rules