Filler Words

Gavin McMahon interview
Gavin McMahon, Peter Watts, Lisa Braithewaite, Michelle Mazur and Me

My fellow professional speaker, Gavin McMahon, is a founding partner at fassforward consulting group. He also writes a great blog on public speaking and presentations: Make a Powerful Point.

Gavin recently turned his attention on filler words. He assembled a virtual panel of experts and asked the following question: “How do you get rid of the ‘ummm’ word?” On the panel were Peter Watts, Lisa Braithewaite, Michelle Mazur and me.

Interestingly, even though everyone on the panel answered the question independently, there is a common theme in the answers: Reducing filler words when we speak is a worthy objective; however, we should not become fixated on them. There are more important things such as content and connection with the audience.

If a filler words sneaks in every now and then, it is not the end of the world. Your audience will likely not even notice. If, on the other hand, you say “ah” or “um” every few words, it will be distracting.

The best way in which to reduce filler words is to become comfortable with pauses. I have written a detailed post about why pauses are important and when and how they should be used.

[Update: Unfortunately, as of January 2020, it appears that the post is no longer on line.]

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mannerofspeaking

mannerofspeaking

  1. A Sunday morning murmur: I’m a regular audiobook listener? I get my free classics at http://librivox.org/, which uses volunteers to read chapters? Amateurs, bless them, so I’m very accepting of varying quality, accents and audibility? There’s one phenomenon that makes me skip chapters however, I think it’s called the ‘Valley Girl Syndrome’ where women volunteers make their voices go up at the end of every sentence as if it was a question? I could deal with a few lines in a dialogue that way, but whole book chapters? See? It’s catching..?

    1. Thanks, Jon. The ums could be coming for a number of reasons: being tired; too much going on; lack of preparation time (for presentations); or other reasons. I find that I cycle in and out of “umming” and “ahing”. Unless there is an um in every sentence, I would not make too big a deal out of it. Rather, get comfortable with slowing down the delivery and pausing more. The rest will take care of itself.

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