Quora Answer: How Do I Eliminate Pause Fillers When I Speak?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How do you stop saying ‘like’, ‘um’, and ‘you know’, when you are speaking?” 

What you have described are called pause fillers in Toastmasters.  In the field of linguistics, they are also known as fillers, filled pauses, hesitation markers or hesitation planners.  These are sounds or words speakers subconsciously use to signal that they are pausing to think but have not yet finished speaking.  Fillers fall into the category of formulaic language, and different languages, even different dialects, or styles of the same language, have different characteristic filler sounds, and they are closely tied to socioeconomic background or life experiences.  Filler words contain little lexical content in and of themselves, but provide clues to the listener about how they should interpret the speaker intent. 

That aside, when speaking professionally, or with intent, it is best to have no pause fillers, unless they are intentionally there, for specific effect.  Effective communication, with gravitas, with credibility, with specific intent, is like a fine cut with a sword.  Every word, every pause, every breath should be measured, with enough said for the audience to draw a conclusion, but not so much that they audience feel harangued.  There is no place for such filler words. 

Now that we understand what these pause fillers are, and why they should be minimised, we can address how to do it.  The most effective means of doing this is actually to slow down your speaking speed.  This has the added effect of making you sound wiser, measured, intentful.  The ideal speed should hover around 60 to 70 words per minute.  This allows you to breathe, this allows you time to think up the next point because your thoughts have time to catch up with your tongue. 

The second thing to do is to embrace the silence.  Speaking is enhanced when there are pauses in between key points of the argument.  When you are telling a story, it allows the audience the luxury of feeling what you convey.  When telling a joke, it allows them to register that you attempted humour.  When recounting loss and tragedy, the depths of pain and melancholy is enhanced.  Effective speaking does not mean we fill that space with words for the sake of it.  When the audience is discomfited by silence, you have a measure of control over them. 

Finally, develop the habit of speaking in short sentences, with a paucity of conjunctions.  There is a time and place for them, as part of a rhetorical device, but they tend to make you lose your train of thought, so you pause, and in that pausing, you reflexively avail yourself to pause fillers.