Everybody’s voice cracks sometimes. Keep talking. The room forgets it faster than you will.

A crack in your voice feels like the wheels coming off and sounds, to everybody else, like somebody talking. It is a physical event rather than a verdict, and the only thing that makes it memorable is stopping to acknowledge it, which turns two seconds into a moment the room has to manage. Carrying on signals that nothing happened, and within half a minute nothing has.

If it happens, take one breath and keep going from the same sentence. Skip the apology and skip the joke about it. Finish what you were saying, which is the only thing anybody came for.