Comments on: Why you say ummmm when you speak

By: andy

andy — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:14:28 +0000

awesome!!!!!!!

By: How Obama could eliminate his ums (and so could you) : Speaking about Presenting

How Obama could eliminate his ums (and so could you) : Speaking about Presenting — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:07:13 +0000

[...] second piece of conventional advice is to insert a pause and learn to enjoy the power of silence. Good speakers enjoy their silence. They take patience between points to let them sit. And when [...]

By: Vince Stevenson

Vince Stevenson — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:35:29 +0000

Yes, this is one of the issues that I work on really hard with my students. How to eliminate those awful umms and ahhs. It is possible, it takes a bit of time and concentration, but it can be achieved. I have seen average speakers become much improved speakers, simply by working on this one aspect of technique. Rgds Vince

By: Sharon Lensky

Sharon Lensky — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:32:46 +0000

Two of my teachers helped drive this point home with me. One, in tenth grade English, would intone “Don’t say um” each time one of the students slipped. It made us painfully aware of the number of times this actually happens. The other, in my grad school computer science program, was a perpetrator. He filled his dead air time with the phrase “by the way” and created myriad run-on sentences. It got so bad that, by the second lecture, I was making a tick mark on a piece of paper each time he uttered it. He averaged about 120 occurrences per two hour lecture. Ugh.

By: Twitted by javelin_rondo

Twitted by javelin_rondo — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:35:16 +0000

[...] This post was Twitted by javelin_rondo – Real-url.org [...]

By: scottberkun.com » Wednesday linkfest + Confessions

scottberkun.com » Wednesday linkfest + Confessions — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:35:23 +0000

[...] Why we say ummmmm. Some facts on one of the most annoying things about public speakers. [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:31:08 +0000

Also see this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/06/the_odd_body_language_fillers/

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:54:56 +0000

It seems everyone has different levels of sensitivity to this and how much it annoys them when speakers do it. I know some people who can’t listen – they are so distracted by the umms they want to get up and leave rather than fight their way through. And then there are other people who barely seem to notice many of the subtle annoyances that fill books on public speaking.

I do believe everything matters – even if it’s a slight distraction, public speaking is hard enough – if you can remove something that likely distracts half the audience, it’s a better use of practice than adding more to the talk.

By: Steve Arrowood

Steve Arrowood — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:50:29 +0000

This topic cannot get too much attention. Thanks for bringing it up.

There is a line that exists for these ‘fillers’/'mistakes’/'disfluencies’, and the line shifts depending on the individual filters and social dynamic.

Linguists have referred to “um” etc. as discourse markers. This is because all language we make, verbally and non, is purposeful. But it can be perceived as a mistake depending on the individual and the dynamic.

I wrote some more about the other side of the toastmaster coin here: http://arrowoodcurve.blogspot.com/2009/03/um-er-like-uh.html

By: Scott Kiser

Scott Kiser — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:31:24 +0000

Nice write!

During and after college, I tended bar and began to talk like a sailor; a young lady I knew at the time objected, so I looked for ways to change my speech patterns. I chose to use another exclamation in place of a curse. At first I was very self-conscious, halting my speech and quite deliberately saying “egad” or whatever silly word I had chosen; but over time it became second nature.

I think the point is that it is never effective to say, “I will stop doing this,” rather, one should say, “I will do that instead.” When one removes a habit, it leaves a vacuum; something else, quite possibly something negative, will rush in if you don’t deliberately replace it with something positive.

So, like, that’s my entire post. Um.