we have public shamings about how often we say “um” and “uh”

by Alison Green on October 14, 2024

I’m off today. This was originally published in 2017.

A reader writes:

Every month, my work has a “pep rally” where the whole staff gets together to highlight what’s going on in each department. My boss, the executive director, has recently decided she wants to cure everyone of using the words “um,” “uh,” and “like” when they are talking. Her idea is that each pep rally, two people will present some sort of five-minute speech on their department and we will all watch and count how many times the person says “um,” “uh,” or “like.”

It’s horrible. It makes you overthink everything because you’re so conscious that all your peers are staring at you, waiting for your next “um.” A bunch of us call it “The Shaming.” It doesn’t seem to help and it makes people feel bad afterward. When you’re done, our boss announces how many times you said “um” and lets you know what else you could work on.

I just don’t think this is right. I get what my boss is trying to do, but I feel like there’s a better way to go about it. Would I be out of line if I said something to her about how I felt?

There’s a certain type of manager who’s unclear on appropriate boundaries and thinks it’s okay to use their position to carry out personal agendas that have nothing to do with people’s jobs (like this guy). This feels very much like your manager has a pet peeve and has decided to misuse the authority of her job — and misuse the time of her staff — to pursue something that really shouldn’t be this high of a priority.

It’s very unlikely that everyone on your staff has a job where using the occasional “um” or “uh” matters. Some do, no doubt, but it’s unlikely that it’s so important to everyone’s position that they need this kind of training.

Your boss would probably argue that everyone can benefit from becoming a more polished speaker. And sure, it’s a great skill to build if people want to.

But this isn’t the way to go about it. The public shamings are BS, even for the people who genuinely do need to be extremely polished when speaking. In general, people do better when they get critical feedback in private, not when they’re forced to stand in front of their peers while they’re critiqued.

I get “I wanted to be a teacher” vibes from the whole thing, but she’s dealing with adults who aren’t taking a class.

So no, you wouldn’t be out of line to speak up. But unless you have extremely good rapport with your boss — and maybe even then — you’ll be more effective if you and some of your coworkers speak up as a group, rather than if it’s just you.  The more of you saying “this feels demeaning and we want to stop,” the more likely you are to have an impact.

(You might also arm yourself with this take on “like” from Merriam-Webster and this one from linguists — for your own morale, if nothing else.)

Read an update to this letter here.

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{ 163 comments }

{ 163 comments… read them below }

  1. Bruce*

    Toastmasters is still a real thing, never been a member myself but my late spouse did it for years and really got a lot out of it. Several companies I’ve worked for had on site Toastmasters groups too!

    1. Bruce*

      To be clear, for the boss to start a Toastmasters group and make it mandatory would also be pretty weird and inappropriate!

      1. I guess my entire company was the real work wife the whole time.*

        And that’s basically what has happened here!

        1. Bruce*

          Hah, thinking back TM does have an “Ah Counter” or something like that… But the overall vibe is supposed to be fun, not humiliating. And voluntary. Like I said, I was never a member, it was my late wife’s thing, but she got a lot out of it and had fun.

          1. WillowSunstar*

            Can confirm, currently in Toastmasters. The Ah Counter doesn’t only count ahs, but also is supposed to count things like ums, likes, sentences with and used to string them together, buts, awkward pauses, restarts, and repeats.

            However, it is very weird to make people who are not paying Toastmasters dues to do this. Most clubs even give first-time guests a grace period of not having their crutch words counted.

        2. Observer*

          I think it’s worse than a toasmasters group being made mandatory with coworkers. Because in addition to that, the boss was doing it wrong.

      2. Panhandlerann*

        I was in Toastmasters long ago. Some military guys were among the members of this particular chapters. One of them was the superior officer over the others. Eventually he was transferred elsewhere. Instantly, the others stopped coming, and it became obvious why they’d been members in the first place.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      Yes, but they teach strategies on how to avoid filler words and plan your sentences ahead, not just publicly shame you! The point of having people count the filler words for you is because they can be invisible and hard to track. It’s not a “gotcha” trick.

    3. Angstrom*

      The “uh-counter” is a Toastmasters role for prepared speech evaluations, along with “grammerian”, “timer”, etc. In that context it is useful because people are actively seeking that feedback.
      If public speaking or presenting is not a job function, policing speech patterns is not appropriate.
      Persoanlly, I do find the constant use of fillers to be annoying, but that’s my problem.

    4. mreasy*

      Yeah and this boss’s method makes it seem like not using “um” is what makes someone a good speaker?

      1. Angstrom*

        I’d argue that eliminating unecessary words is part of being a good speaker.

        Think of editing documents: you try to get rid of any words that don’t help make your point or accomplish the goal of that piece of writing. Why should speech be different?

        1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          Because they are very different. Written words can be put through spelling checks, grammatical checks, editors. The spoken word cannot. Additionally it forces what is a very unnatural method of speaking onto people of differing cultures/upbringings/accents/speech issues etc.

          It’s like correcting your coworker on their spoken grammar. Unspeakably rude.

          1. Angstrom*

            Context matters. If I’m getting information on a technical subject where clarity and precison matter, I expect clear, precise language.

            I work in an environment where fillers such as “like” and “sorta” can add confusion. Is it sorta opaque, or is it really opaque? Having to ask for clarification helps nobody.

            1. allathian*

              But then I expect that you’d be more comfortable with truly meaningless filler “words” like “um” and “ah”. They don’t change the meaning of the statement.

              Sure, it’s annoying to listen to someone who can’t get a word out without fillers, but unless that filler is literal swearing, I can generally shrug it off.

              I don’t mind swearing when it’s warranted, letting a swear out when you hurt yourself slightly, such as get a paper cut or stub your toe, has been shown to relieve the pain, and the worse the swear, the greater the relief. This doesn’t work for people who use swears like filler words, though.

            2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

              You can do clear precise language on technical matters with precision and still use filler language to an extent.

              If one desires absolutely accurate no flaws speech use a computer.

        2. Spooky*

          No, audible speech uses ums as a filled pause to make it clear that someone is considering what word to use next, or is modulating the rhythm of the sentence in order to better achieve an effect. It’s not better to do without filler non-words. They’re a tool just like any other.

        3. just some guy*

          “Good speaking involves eliminating unnecessary words. When editing text, you remove useless words. Why not in speech?” – from 45 words down to 17 ;-)

          That said, most things people do in language have a purpose. A lot of things are mistakenly written off as “unnecessary” by folk who just don’t understand the purpose those features serve. (Or occasionally because they understand and oppose it; language is often a proxy for broader social/political struggles.)

        4. Lenora Rose*

          As someone who just got rid of somewhere around 100 words only to insert 670 more… getting rid of words isn’t the only way editing works, even for the overly verbose.

          Speech has a rhythm. A long sentence that puts the beat where you want it can be better than a quick phrase that doesn’t. A well placed “um” can be an effective way to highlight a point, or downplay one. Excessive use of “um”, or habitual rather than considered ones, can obscure meaning, but to dismiss them as always wrong is to ignore why even expert public speakers sometimes have a few.

    5. M*

      Having done a lot of (competitive!) public speaking – the “uh-counter” stuff is one of the things that’s always made me side-eye Toastmasters. That’s not an effective way to train people out of that verbal tic! There’s copious research evidence! Some of what they treat as unwanted verbal tics aren’t even bad things!

      Filler words are what we insert into moments in our sentences when we’re working out the next word we want to say. They happen because most of us instinctively avoid leaving empty space when talking, because most of our talking happens in conversational settings, where stopping talking is the agreed signal for someone else to jump in. So we learn to make thought-free noises to fill that space when we want to keep “holding the floor”, and then when we’re speaking in a context where *no-one is going to jump in*, we don’t stop.

      The effective ways to stop doing it – which, to be clear, aren’t even a thing you should bother spending time doing unless you’re doing a lot of public speaking – largely involve getting *really* comfortable deliberately building pauses into the flow of your speaking, until it becomes equally second nature to just naturally pause at appropriate moments when giving a speech. People listening to a speech generally respond a lot better to its key message(s) when they’re given built-in time to mentally process information and emotional reactions; when they’re given tonal light-and-shade and emphasis; and when the speech has a natural structure that let’s them “fill in the gaps” if they briefly tune out, so that tuning out doesn’t lose them completely. Micro-pauses in public speaking are *great* for the audience – and give the speaker time to mentally “place” themselves for the next bit of their speech.

      You know what’s absolutely awful for building confidence leaving silence in the room? Someone sitting in the corner tallying your filler words, grammatically incorrect sentence structure (completely natural for human speech! good, even, in many contexts!) and, even more importantly, the “awkward pauses”, something uh-counters are generally *actually tasked with counting*.

  3. dulcinea47*

    I feel like whenever someone becomes a manager/supervisor, someone should hand them all the scientific data about things that don’t motivate people. Any kind of public shame or humiliation are top of the Never Do list.

    1. Ally McBeal*

      Oh, that implies they’ll care. Some will, some really won’t. I once had a new boss tell me that he failed up (not his exact phrasing but that is what his story was) and got an executive role when he had no real idea what he was doing (that WAS his phrasing or very close to it). Many people – perhaps especially women and other people who struggle with imposter syndrome – would use that opportunity to challenge themselves, read lots of management books, read the full AAM archive, hire an executive coach, etc. He did none of those things and proved himself to be such a bad boss that I came down with shingles under his management. Fortunately he burned out spectacularly while at that job so I only had to deal with him for another year or so.

      1. dulcinea47*

        You’re right, of course, but I think it would help some figure it out faster than they otherwise might.

        “my manager gave me shingles”- add that to Glass Door. Ugh.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          Better yet – I got to tell my CEO “I told you so” to his face after my boss burned out and quit.

    2. Rex Libris*

      There are a not insignificant number of managers who think the purpose of being a manager is mostly so you can make people cater to your pet peeves, because they don’t understand that their preferences are not necessarily automatically right, and everyone else’s are not therefore automatically wrong.

      1. Spooky*

        Yes I can’t remember where, but I read someone phrasing it as once they get a certain status or power level, they no longer think that liking blue and disliking green is a personal preference, but that it’s objectively true. After all, if I like blue and I’ve been rewarded with power, everyone must be in need of my amazing insights about how blue looks best.

    3. JustaTech*

      Please yes! I want this list. I need this list! Goodness knows no one at my company has offered me *any* kind of guidance beyond “this is how you approve time off requests” and “well, I think there are some videos in our training library” – yeah, I watched them and they’re terrible because they all skip the actual meat of the subject. “Have this kind of conversation delicately.” – What does that mean? What does that sound like? Hello, a script please?
      (Which is why Alison is awesome, because she’s generous with scripts.)

    4. it goes without saying*

      “In my department, we believe that we do our best work when we welcome the whole person. We respect ideas no matter how they’re presented. Speech impediments are no impediment to our hearing any point of view. We don’t judge anyone for their neurospicy modes of speech. We don’t shame our teammates for the way they talk. We encourage each other to speak in the ways that feel most comfortable. And we believe our quarterly performance numbers clearly show the value of this approach. Thank you.”

  4. rkz*

    Honestly, I actually teach public speaking as my job and I wouldn’t really recommend this approach even if these were students in a class!

    1. Naomi*

      My middle school drama teacher had us do this! But at least there’s a reasonable argument that improving our public speaking skills was part of his job. And as twelve-year-olds we probably used a lot more “likes” and “ums” than most adults.

    2. daffodil*

      I also teach public speaking, and I agree. The anxiety and scrutiny usually makes the delivery worse, and it really doesn’t matter that much. In fact, there’s some evidence that a little bit of “um” or “uh” demonstrates that you’re thinking about what you’re saying and makes you seem more trustworthy.

      1. rkz*

        My thoughts exactly – increasing the students already exciting anxiety is almost certainly going to lead to more filler words. I also want them to speak extemporaneously (as opposed to reading from a script) l a few “um”s or “uh”s here and there are totally expected and natural. I usually emphasize that we just want to make sure there aren’t so many that it is distracting from what they are saying and we talk about how slowing down, pausing, breathing etc. can lead to less filler words.

      2. Fluffy Initiative*

        There was a really interesting episode of the 99% Invisible Podcast that talked about how filler words can actually be useful “linguistic signposts”, and are found in every language. Obviously don’t go overboard to the point that nobody can follow what you’re saying, but the occasional “Like” or “Um” doesn’t mean you’re an uninformed nincompoop. (link here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-18/)

    3. No Longer Looking*

      Wow! When I took speech in college back around 1990, the teacher had a week where everyone snapped their fingers each time a presenter used a verbal pause, to really highlight how often we do it. I found it very helpful – but it was part of a specific section on presenting better techniques, and definitely not something we continued doing.

      1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

        My Toastmasters-adjacent college class had I think a bell for verbal pauses and a cliché horn. But only during specific sections of the class.

        (That teacher was also a bit of a bully and picked on a specific class member, always using him for bad examples and calling attention to his faults in a way he didn’t do to other people, until we decided it was time to do something about it.)

    4. duinath*

      Yeah, even if we all agree that the occasional um, uh, or pause is bad (which… not necessarily) how does this help?

      If you want to help me stop doing something, don’t count how many times I do it; teach me techniques or tricks I can use to do it less.

      We do like a boss who takes constructive criticism as it is intended, though. Seems like she actually did mean well.

  5. errrrr, uhhhh, duhhhh*

    i’d start every speech with 50+ umms and deliberately uhh and umm throughout just to annoy her and demonstrate how ridiculous this is.

    1. pally*

      I was thinking the exact same thing! And increase the frequency of those “ums”, “uhs” and “likes” every time I was asked to speak.

      No doubt the critique would be, “Clearly, pally isn’t improving over time.”

      Got that right!

    2. Thinking*

      My thought too. Not to an extreme, just more than usual. When called on it I’d say “Well, um, this, like, makes me so, um, what’s
      the word, um, like, nervous!”

    3. Stipes*

      I’d dream of getting up on stage and ONLY saying “um” and “uh…” repeatedly, with varying lengths of pauses in between, for as long as I could get away with. See how long I can make it seem like I’m genuinely trying to remember how to start my speech.

  6. Dawn*

    “Please enjoy my speech, The History and Etymology of Filler Words Such As ‘Um,’ ‘Uh,’ and ‘Like’…”

    1. Dawn*

      In all honestly I’m terrible for ums and uhs and I’m still considered a very good public speaker. Lots of people are. It’s all in how you work them in.

      1. Trout 'Waver*

        With all due respect, if you’re a very good public speaker, you’d probably be even better if you limited the filler words.

        I mean, Shaq was a notoriously bad free-throw shooter, but still an All-Star NBA player. He certainly would have been even better if he could make 90% of his free throws.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          Listen to a presidential speech. Obama is considered a really great speaker. He ums, and ahhs all over the place. Most people do. It’s normal.

          1. MsM*

            I was going to say, if OP needed evidence one’s ability at public speaking shouldn’t be judged by filler words, he’s a good example.

            1. Angstrom*

              On the other hand, look at MLK’s speeches.
              “I, um, have, um, like, a dream” would not be as powerful, or as well remembered.

              1. Observer*

                Well, “For all things there is a time, and a season for each thing.”

                That includes filler words.

                Obama is a phenomenal speaker. And I highly doubt that his use of filler words would make much of a difference to that.

                1. Rex Libris*

                  I suspect Obama’s public speaking style is intentional, to sound more casual and relatable, ums and ahs included.

              2. Dawn*

                I don’t think you can actually state that with any confidence, honestly.

                And I mean, yes, ok, you managed to put more fillers in there than actual words, but people don’t actually speak like that unless they are incredibly nervous. It would sound more like, “I have a dream! Uh, it is a dream deeply rooted in, ah, the American dream!”

                I don’t think, unlike the strawman you’ve created here, it would be remembered much differently at all.

                1. Angstrom*

                  Part of what makes that style of speaking powerful is the cadence, the rhythm, the timing, the emphasis on specific words and syllables.
                  Fillers often disrupt that.
                  I think of it as being similar to music, where pauses are often used for emphasis. One doesn’t have to fill all the space around every note or chord.

                2. Dawn*

                  One doesn’t have to, but there are entire genres of music where one, in fact, does.

                  The answer here – in my opinion – is that there is no one correct way, and that it varies from speaker to speaker, and even from speech to speech.

                  I understand that you’re strongly attached to classical rhetoric, but I do think that at least in 2024 it’s becoming increasingly outdated for many use cases.

                3. Observer*

                  @Angstrom
                  Fillers often disrupt that.

                  The key word is “often”. Not *always*. Sometimes they don’t disrupt at all, and something they are *part* of the cadence.

                  The bottom line is that it’s simply not reasonable or factual to claim that getting rid of these kinds of fillers *will definitely* improve the speeches of someone who uses them. In some case? Sure! In others? We have solid evidence that this is not the case.

                  To go back to the example of Obama. I think it’s pretty lame to claim that if only stopped using these fillers THEN he would become a *really* great speaker. He’s a phenomenal speaker, with all of the fillers he uses. The key is that he knows *when* and *how* to use them, rather than sticking to rigid (and unnecessary) rules about the matter.

          2. Dawn*

            I’m not overly familiar with Obama’s speeches (they didn’t jump out to me just because I’m not American and I didn’t hear them much,) but lots and lots of stand-up comedians have routines full of filler words. They actually take advantage of them to draw out a joke, and that’s largely what I’ve modeled my own speaking on. People don’t much care if I “um” because I’m funny.

          3. Trout 'Waver*

            I feel like Obama has a couple different speaking styles and he picks the style that best suits his audience and the message he’s trying to deliver. His 2004 DNC speech, for example, is almost completely clear of filler words.

            1. dulcinea47*

              Was he reading from a teleprompter? I dunno, I have listened to a lot of Obama’s speeches (I find his voice soothing) and have never been like “this guy ums too much.”

            2. Observer*

              I feel like Obama has a couple different speaking styles and he picks the style that best suits his audience and the message he’s trying to deliver.

              Which actually proves the point others were trying to make and disproves your original comment. You simply have zero basis to assume that @Dawn would be a better speaker by removing the fillers, since you don’t know anything else about the speeches. There are simply places where it *does not matter*. And in those cases, focusing on removing the fillers is likely to *degrade* the speech, not improve it.

              1. Dawn*

                Honestly, if I had to think my way through to the end of the sentence before saying it, we’d never get there.

                And I’d probably forget where I was going halfway through anyway.

                My brain just is not wired that way.

              2. Trout 'Waver*

                I think everyone would be a better speaker if they used fewer filler words, yes. I will stand by that statement.

                I would also argue that politicians don’t always make clear communication their goal, and that modeling your speaking habits after politicians giving stump speeches make not make you the most effective orator in other contexts.

                By the way, it’s more productive in a discussion to not assume someone is contradicting themselves just because you don’t understand their points. People are prone to reading themselves into comments; they bring their own biases and experiences with them. Maybe ask for that context rather than come out swinging?

        2. Dawn*

          I’m quite certain you’re not wrong that I could improve my public speaking, but it’s extensive work I don’t care to do when people already like what I have to say.

          I have many, many things that I could/should practice which will return more than marginal gains. This is not one of them.

        3. Apex Mountain*

          If the comparison is to Shaq, that means Dawn is already one of the top 20-25 public speakers in history, so I think she’s good!

        4. Antilles*

          Okay, so let’s talk basketball.
          First off, Shaq is considered one of the 10 or so best players to ever play in the NBA, won four titles and made three other NBA Finals. It’s possible that free throw shooting might have made him better, but interestingly: There isn’t a playoff series you can realistically point to where if he’d shot 70% instead of 50%, it would have flipped the outcome.
          1995 Orlando was decisively swept by Houston. In 1996, nobody was beating Jordan’s best team. Then he went to the Lakers and they took a couple years for Kobe to mature and build up surrounding talent to really threaten for titles. They won the three-peat and the team internally combusted in 2003 and 2004. Then he went to Miami and got injured in the playoffs for the 2005 Heat. Then the Heat won the title in 2006, but in 2007, Shaq tore his knee and was basically never the same dominant force afterwards. Maybe you want to quibble with one of these cases (2004 might be the best argument since that Pistons team was far from dominant), but even if we give him that one, it still doesn’t meaningfully change his career.
          Also worth noting that for all people talk about his free throw shooting, by all accounts he did put forth a *lot* of effort trying to work on it, just that nothing ever worked.

          1. Trout 'Waver*

            You can’t really look at it in isolation, though. There was a strategy that was called “Hack-a-Shaq” after all.

            Although, I do agree that the questions “Would Shaq have been a better basketball player if he could shoot 90% from the free throw line?” and “Would Shaq have been a better basketball player if he spent more of his limited training time on improving his free throw shooting?” are very different questions. In fact, the answer to the first is definitely “Yes” and the answer to second is, imho, “Apparently not”.

          2. Pescadero*

            If he shoots 80% – he goes from being the #9 all time scorer to #6. 85% would have pushed him past Jordan to #5.

            1. Antilles*

              80% or 85% isn’t really a fair comparison for “what if Shaq shot…”. Shaq’s contemporaries like Hakeem, Ewing, Robinson, Duncan, and Malone were all between 69% and 74% and none of them got major criticism about their free throws. Hall of Fame big men from the previous generation (Kareem, Moses, etc) were also in this same general range.
              So let’s instead say that he’s more of an average shooter for a guy his size/era, call it 72%. That adds an extra ~2000 points on his resume, putting him somewhere right around where Dirk ended up (#6 all time) but behind Jordan. It would also clear a nice round number of 30,000 points. That would improve his statistical profile for sure.
              But would that really change the way people overall view him as a player? I’m not really sure it would. And as detailed above, I’m not sure it wins him any more titles (or MVP’s either).

              1. Dawn*

                I barely understand anything about sports, but there is one thing I do know, and while it’s not about basketball, it sounds relevant here:

                The stereotypical image of a football player is a “big broad tough guy,” and a lot of the time it’s true, but there is a position called “running back” and they are usually tiny little guys because tiny guys can run and dodge a lot better than men built like brick walls.

                This sounds like it’s the same kind of thing; you have a player who is seven feet tall? Ok, he’s going to be awesome at dunking, but he’s probably not going to be as coordinated as someone smaller would be.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      I wonder if there’s any correlation between the presence of filler words in someone’s speech and how much, if any, rhetorical training they’ve had. Back in Ye Olden Centuries, when the only people going to school were the sons of upper class men and especially talented boys from ‘lower’ families, rhetoric and logic were major parts of the education. And fewer people were literate, so a speech would have been more meaningful than a written argument. A lot of our current idealized Western education still calls back to the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras, which itself called back to far more ancient Greek and Roman principles, including that focus on speaking.

      Now, many more people are literate; rhetoric and logic are a faded shadow of themselves, appearing primarily as high school speech and debate; and most of us get our arguments from written or video sources anyways. And it’s a pretty Western-centric approach to boot.

      1. Gloaming*

        I find that the people that I know with classical rhetorical training tend to speak a *lot* more slowly and take much longer pauses before responding. I’m wondering now if that’s because they need to plan the sentence all the way through before they start because snagging on a filler word was unacceptable.

        1. Angstrom*

          Probably so. Someone with that kind of training is thinking ahead to how they’re going to build a cohesive argument. Every response should be laying a foundation for the next one. Speed is not important.

          1. Gloaming*

            Ugh. Kinda wish they’d just get it out there sometimes (and honestly I’d rather see how they work through things than get a perfectly polished first response). Not everything needs to be A Pronouncement.

            1. Angstrom*

              I had a boss who would often take a long pause before answering. Some people made the mistake of thinking that meant he was a slow thinker. They were wrong. It was fun to watch. ;-)

        2. Strive to Excel*

          I think it’s less filler words and more a whole mindset of planning one’s speaking points ahead.

    3. Gamer Girl*

      I specifically studied fillers (university linguistics level), focusing on um, uh, and like, and the main takeaways were:

      1. People use them more when speaking about something that has many options for expression vs few. Um, Uh, etc., are vocal pauses that quite literally help humans think.

      When studying professors: humanities has far more, science far less. Studies show, across age, location, and gender, that that’s due in large part to the wide-ranging possible words vs specific terms available while lecturing.

      2. Though men and women use fillers in nearly equal amounts when speaking on similar subjects and in similar circumstances, women are specifically called out or downgraded for using it, whereas men’s usage is barely noted (grading, work presentation reviews, on air, etc). Dating had some interesting subplots to “like” usage, but I can’t recall specifics.

      (Using the m/f binary here–wider data was only barely available when I studied and researched this some years ago!)

      3. The more marginalized the person, the more listeners were biased against filter usage. Particularly against non native speakers (esp POC), and teens and young women across all classes and ethnicities, followed by POC (in that order at the time, though the data may have evolved since)

      4. The bias against “like” and other slang fillers is fading: the first gen teen girls who spoke in “valley girl”, after all, became mothers, and their children have children of their own. Mothers are still by and large the primary source of linguistic input for their children (esp in utero). It’s likely that within another generation or two that filler bias for like will continue to fade.

      tldr: Fillers help us think. Fillers show that humans are thinking and selecting a precise word while we speak!

      1. Dawn*

        Thank you, thrilled to hear from an actual linguist on this! (and your conclusions were exactly what I expected that they would be; classical rhetoric is, well, somewhat classist, and definitely on its way out in most cases.)

  7. Falling Diphthong*

    From the update:
    I tried to word everything where she wouldn’t feel attacked and as if I was just expressing my feelings toward the activity.
    This is so important–tone and phrasing make such a difference to how people take in feedback. Especially when the feedback is “Your idea sucks, but I have less power than you.”

    1. Dawn*

      I think that one depends. It worked out for OP in this case but in many cases I think that you can underscore how serious feedback actually is by softballing it.

      You have to know your audience for that one (and in my experience, men are more prone to dismiss softballed feedback than women, especially coming from a woman, but that’s just my experience.)

      1. dulcinea47*

        But if you *are* a woman, there’s also the chance that someone will think you’re being too brusque and won’t listen to you b/c of that. It’s almost impossible to win, so, good for OP.

    2. Elbe*

      That update was wild. It boggles my mind that the manager didn’t seems to realize that forcing people to present and be graded on public speaking (when it’s not part of their job) would make them uncomfortable and seem mean. It’s great that she decided to stop once she got feedback, but… I have no idea what she was thinking in the first place.

      2. JustaTech*

        Some people don’t realize that not everyone thrives on the same kind of feedback.

        Years ago I joined a gym where part of the joining fee included some work with one of their trainers. When asked about things like goals I was very clear that I do not respond well to shouting and negative encouragement. Like, critique my technique, please! Push me for another rep or heavier weights. But don’t shout and don’t say things like “give me one more you wimp!” because I will walk out the door.
        The trainer seemed a little surprised but was happy to give feedback and encouragement in the format that worked for me, even though he clearly preferred to get “shouty” feedback.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Yes! And also some people may have been raised in the era of tough love and negative reinforcement and never been exposed to positive reinforcement at all so they think negative reinforcement is the only way to get people to change.

          My friend’s high schooler was telling me about their current math teacher and I feel like he was raised in such an environment because he’s a terrible bully. I wish I’d seen this question before I was hanging out with them this weekend because the update is a really good one and I have a feeling this kid would do well to organize their fellow students to somehow report to the administration how absolutely terrible he is. Of course kid has told their parents and they’ve talked to administration, but for some reason the guy is still teaching. Sigh. (And no, he’s not an older teacher who’s burnt out from decades of teaching; though he’s been teaching for long enough that he might be burnt out, I doubt that’s the reason he’s such a bully.)

  8. High Score!*

    When it’s your turn be sure to work in the words like, um, and uh as much as possible. Throw in some “you know”s for a retro vibe. Earn the high score! Brag about it.

    1. ThursdaysGeek*

      Not gonna lie, I’d add a bunch of fillers to the front and back of every sentence too, know what I mean?

    2. Purple Cabbage*

      I transcribe & caption a lot of videos and interviews for work, and “you know” is still going strong!
      I don’t even notice it in speech though; it’s just later when cleaning up the transcript that I see how frequently it pops up.

    3. Chirpy*

      I’m just going to note that the point where I started doing Spanish style verbal pauses was the point where people started complimenting how good my Spanish was. Verbal pauses make speech sound natural.

      1. allathian*

        Yup, same thing for me.

        Likewise in French. I’m from Finland, and here our conversational style involves waiting for your turn, and a good conversationalist ensures that everyone gets to say their piece. Basically the only time interrupting is considered okay is when someone’s interrupted you and you’re taking your turn back.

        Speaking French, you need to be comfortable with interrupting to show that you’re listening attentively, and I can remember the exact moment when I did that for the first time. I was on exchange in France as a student, talking to a group of classmates and suddenly it just clicked and I started talking like the French. A few weeks before I left, someone paid me the best compliment I’ve ever heard about my language skills “I like talking to you because it’s like talking to a Frenchwoman.” I guess it helped that while most exchange students hung out together, I tried to hang out with the French because I knew that’d improve my French like nothing else.

        Because you get interrupted all the time when speaking French with the French, filler words are definitely a thing. They can be used to show when it’s okay to interrupt you.

  9. Madame Desmortes*

    The linguistics term for these is “filler” (though I’ve also heard “hesitation marker”). They’re as close to a linguistic universal as I know of. We all use ’em.

    We also tend not to notice them! We only notice once they surpass a certain amount of time-fill in a given speaker’s speech habits… or if someone explicitly calls attention to them, like this unhappy manager.

    Leave fillers alone. They’re harmless at worst, useful at best… and trying to eliminate them entirely can create unnecessarily self-conscious speakers or excessive dead time during speeches.

    1. Czhorat*

      yeah, see my comment below. my speech is odd partly because I fought so hard to eliminate fillers (and partly because I’m a bit of an oddball)

    2. ThatOtherClare*

      Young women, specifically, actually tend not to be using like as a filler. They use it with very targeted intent, to specify when they’re speaking in approximations. They’ll flag an indirect quote with ‘She was like “Awesome!”‘, or an approximate number with ‘I need to buy like ten new books for my course’.

      Why do young women feel the need to do this? Because their male peers and adults of any gender tend to sneer at young women for being ‘wrong’. While their use of ‘like’ has taken away the ability for people to scoff ‘It’s eight books, actually‘, it has opened up a new avenue for correction – their flexible and intelligent adaptation of the English similie marker.

      You may accuse flexible language users of babbling like baboons if you wish, but you’ll be missing out on important and clearly-conveyed information if you do so.

      All that said, ‘Like’ tends to be very commonly used as an empty filler word by people in the media. Older scriptwriters haven’t listened closely to where ‘like’ is being used in real life, and therefore they use it in a very ad-hoc way. Even teenage girls find teenage girls on TV annoying, and rightly so.

  10. Czhorat*

    The update on this was great, and demonstrates how many of these issues stem from thoughtlessness rather than malice; it’s VERY easy to get tunnel vision about what is or is not harmful; I’m glad that the manager in question took the feedback for what it’s worth.

    As an aside, I used to have a bad habit of using lots of “ums” and “uhs”. I worked hard to cut them out, but the result is an odd speech cadence in which I’ll pause rather than use a filler word. I’m not sure that this is an imrpvement.

    1. 40 Years In the Hole*

      The military training I had (from basic recruit to officer candidate training and everything in between), was laser-focused on “training” this “quirk” out of you. Their assumption was that everyone would, at some point, have to provide clear, concise briefings/presentations/tasking orders, and be flawlessly confident while doing so. So…practice, practice, practice. The ums, ahs, throat clearings, keys-in-pockets jangling- were absolutely counted/commented on, in front of your peers. Not in a demeaning way; we knew up front that this would be discussed. But still. Not everyone is so self-assured that they never have a “brain fart” even if they know their subject inside out.
      Once you got out into the working world, things were relaxed a bit. But even generals tongue-trip on occasion. The downside: after 40 yrs I still find myself fixated on speakers’ who overdo the “fillers” and I lose focus/interest.

      1. Zombeyonce*

        I have ADHD and I can either use filler words or pause in the middle of a sentence to figure out where I was going (even if I planned it ahead of time). I feel bad for people being judged for either.

        1. CLC*

          Same. This attitude is very discriminatory against and deterimental to neurodivergent folks especially. Personally I also have the problem that I hate being “fake” (I actually *can’t* be fake most of the time). Filler words are the natural way people speak to one another, and it means you are thinking about what you are saying. In order to not use them you have to practice and rehearse, and that makes you sound fake unless it’s a setting one would be expected to practice and rehearse (e.g. in a play!). If I have the type of situation where I am giving a very formal presentation to high ups, I do rehearse quite a bit, but honestly when I am actually doing it I still use some filler words, sometimes on purpose to sound more natural! If you don’t use them it sounds like you are reading a script and not thinking and it’s not conversational. In the vast majority of professional situations that’s not a good thing.

          1. Angstrom*

            Arguing that not using fillers is unnatural does not account for all of the people who were brought up not using them, which often started in early childhood. “Natural” is what you’re used to. If one’s family made a point of not using fillers, it would be natural to follow their example. Many adults — especially older ones — are comfortably conversational without fillers, and do not need to make a conscious effort to avoid them.
            What is “natural” to one person is not necessarily the same as what is “natural” to anyone else.

  11. jane's nemesis*

    i once had to do a radio interview at my job. I was NOT a comms person, had no training on this kind of thing – it was just a fluke. I thought I did okay, but then I got a bunch of emails from someone pointing out to me, over and over, that I had said “you know” as a filler a bunch of times and how I really shouldn’t do that and it was so distracting that I did it.

    I don’t know how that person thought they were being helpful at making me incredibly self-conscious about something I had no training in and had to do on the fly!

    1. allathian*

      My sister had to do a radio interview once without much time to prepare. Fortunately the interview didn’t go out live, so they edited out most of the fillers she used. They left in just enough to make her sound natural rather than nervous.

      Since then, she’s done quite a few interviews, including live in the studio for the news, and her use of fillers wasn’t excessive by any means.

  12. Name (Required)*

    I stutter and filler words are how I get over disfluencies and blocks. A younger me would have been filled with quiet anxiety and self-loathing over a practice like this; Current Me would be railing about ableism and a toxic workplace so fast if a supervisor ever did this to me. W. T. Actual. F.

    1. kicking-k*

      This. My daughter is a stammerer and I hate to think of her being put through something like this. She’s usually fine if she can prepare (she’s had speaking roles in plays!) but speaking extempore is a big challenge for her, with lots of halting. I’d agree that sometimes it requires a little patience from the listener but I think she should get that – it’s not something she can help.

    2. GreenDoor*

      My son also uses “um-um-um” as a stutterer. It helps his brain catch up with his mouth. Shaming anyone for it is unproductive and mean and would make things horribly worse for someone with a speech impediment or public speaking anxiety. Public speaking is consistently among the top fears of Americans. I coach high school forensics and debate – blame and shame is the worst way to help people improve public speaking – and does not help alleviate the anexiety associated with it.

  13. Knitting Cat Lady*

    Gah. You can only get rid of ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘er’, etc. if you memorise what you’re saing in advance! They are signs that you’re actually speaking freely and making it up as you go along!

    I’m autistic. And sometims turning mind words into mouth words doesn’t work.

    As long as you enunciate clearly, at appropriate voulume and speed, and don’t mumble that’s enough.

  14. CLC*

    I think I know this person lol. Absolutely horrible boss from a few years ago. Constantly on me for saying and um and uh even in informal meetings. Told me I could never progress in my career if I didn’t make myself more polished (I was in my 40s and extremely good at my technical job). She also scolded me for talking with my hands, and said the way I speak is annoying. When I told her I’m neurodivergent she said it’s “no excuse” and to “try harder”— she said this in front of HR. When I worked with this person it always felt like she wanted us to be in some kind of beauty pageant, never like she cared about the work being done. If OP’s boss is anything like this person though I would warn against speaking up against it. I tried to politely and rationally speak up for myself and it made my person very, very angry and had major consequences for my career. I’ve honestly never met anyone like this person so I’m honestly wondering if they are one and the same!

    1. JustaTech*

      I don’t understand the complaints about talking with your hands. OK, in a small space where you might accidentally hit someone, sure.
      But to emphasize a point? Especially in a casual conversation? Why does it matter?

      I’m sensitive about this because I once had a total stranger come up to me in a wine bar and comment that I “sure use my hands a lot when I talk”. I had been telling my husband and parents a funny story about something that happened in the lab, and this random dude felt it was his place to comment on it? In the moment I felt embarrassed and ashamed, but afterwards I was pretty angry.
      (No, I wasn’t at risk of hitting anyone, and I wasn’t loud.)

      1. Indolent Libertine*

        There is always a random dude who Has An Opinion and thinks your life will be improved by hearing it. Alas, they are never dissuaded by how seldom this is true.

      2. allathian*

        It also depends on the language. I use my hands a lot more when I speak Spanish or French than when I speak Finnish or Swedish. English is somewhere in between.

      3. So I says to Mabel I says*

        I like to imagine I would have shown that person exactly how expressive my hands can be!

        (Giving the finger, not punching him in the face. That would be an overreaction.)

    2. Indolent Libertine*

      OMG that is horrible and I’m so sorry you had tom put up with that. What an awful person that boss was.

    3. allathian*

      They’re not the same person, check the update. This boss took the feedback well and stopped with the speech “improvement” sessions when she learned how much the LW disliked them.

  16. Vipsania Agrippina*

    If my current boss would make us count the number of ums and uhs it would distract me from what the speaker is trying to say.

    1. Observer*

      No surprises on that.

      It’s hard to focus on content when you are being forced to also concentrate of something so minor. It’s like asking you to count sheep while listening to someone. You will either have no idea what number sheep you got up to, or you will have missed most (if not all) of the content of the speech. That’s just how most people’s minds work.

      1. JustaTech*

        It’s like that classic perception test, where you ask people to watch a video and count how many times a ball is passed between two teams. Afterward you ask them about the gorilla.
        “What gorilla?” A person in a gorilla suit walked through the people throwing the balls and waved at the camera, but because the viewer is concentrating on the ball almost no one notices the gorilla.

  17. Do Better, Teachers*

    My 9th grade teacher made us do this but gave a classmate a squeaky dog toy to squeeze if the presenter said um or uh or like. As a student in speech therapy, I dreaded her presentation days more than I can put into printable words.

    She’s a BIG reason I didn’t pursue an English degree.

          1. Zombeyonce*

            I have an English degree and I’ve been very successful. One IT job in particular hired me specifically because I have an English degree because it meant I knew how to write and communicate well. Those are skills that are in high demand in lots of industries.

            Not all people getting English degrees are aspiring authors, though there are plenty of writing careers if that’s your jam. English degrees prepare you for a large number of different jobs. It’s frustrating that people still discount the humanities; plenty of STEM people could benefit from those courses of study.

            1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

              plenty of STEM people could benefit from those courses of study.

              I wholeheartedly agree. None of my myriad qualifications have anything to do with good written communication. And boy does it show sometimes.

        2. Observer*

          Because English degrees are notorious for not helping most people move into satisfying careers?

          1. Future*

            It’s not really true though, is it? Let’s not contribute to these silly stereotypes. Not here.

            1. Zombeyonce*

              Thank you, this idea that the humanities lead to a bunch of unhappy or unemployed people is outdated and ridiculous. The humanities are important.

              We’re literally on a blog where writing is how ideas are presented…how do these people think writers are traditionally educated?

            2. Dawn*

              It’s not a stereotype though, we actually do have data to back up that English degree holders are underemployed in their field of study, and that they’re poorly paid compared to their credentials, to boot.

              Out of roughly 64 million people with a bachelor’s degree or better in English, only about 1.9 million are employed in their degree field, and they’re paid a median wage of $60,000 compared to a mean wage of $66,000 for English majors who are not working in their field (and, for the record, compared to a national mean salary of $78,645 in the same year.)

                1. Future*

                  Why would working in your “field” even be a criteria, though? Most degrees don’t directly lead to working in a particular field. Most English Majors know they aren’t going to be going on to work in “English”. They go on to work in a wide range of fields.

                  And yes, the holders of some degrees make more money on average – STEM and business sorts of things particularly. So what? I understand teachers in the US also make pretty poor salaries. Would you be saying the same thing to someone who qualified as a teacher?

                  This undervaluing of the humanities, and the attitude that higher education exists to pump out workers and for no other reason, is pretty harmful, especially in a time when we need communication and understanding more than ever.

                2. Dawn*

                  I would argue that most degrees actually do lead to working in that field, and that in our capitalistic society – which I would prefer not to live in, but I do – that’s as expected. So of course it’s a criteria! This may not be true for you, but the vast majority of people going to school to get a degree are expecting to work in the field denoted by that degree after graduation – it’s the single biggest criteria of almost anyone looking to pursue a degree. Very, very, very, very, very few people go to school for a subject simply because they are interested in that subject. The vast majority expect to use that degree to find work – and yes, that means in the field that that degree is in.

                  I’m not sure why this is even a debate. Search for the words “raise” and “negotiate” and “more money” on this site if you think that it’s typical thinking that being underpaid doesn’t matter.

                  Your take on this is bizarre.

              2. Dawn*

                Circling back, I may have misread those statistics slightly, but once the link posts there’s still more people with an English degree working outside of their field than in it, and their wages are depressed. That’s from the US DOL. It’s facts.

                2. Dawn*

                  I never said anything about satisfaction. You’re welcome to have that argument with Observer. My joke – which kicked off this thread – was entirely about the fact that English majors are underemployed and undercompensated relative to degree-holders in other fields.

              3. Rex Libris*

                I’d want to actually see the degree comparison to other fields. In my experience, virtually no one is working in the field of study of their bachelor’s degree unless they pursued a graduate degree in the same field.

                1. Dawn*

                  There’s a little bit of that there and I think you’re broadly accurate, but it’s because English postgrad degrees are extremely narrowly focused: you can work in a library, you can work in academia, or you can work outside your field and those are really the options in most cases if you have a Master’s or a Doctorate.

      2. londonedit*

        Excuse me, English degrees are extremely relevant and I don’t believe ‘getting a job that specifically uses one’s degree’ should be the be-all and end-all of university education. We’ve just got rid of a government who spent 14 years trying to strip away funding and opportunity for arts and humanities subjects and I think that’s completely the wrong way to go. We need the arts and we need people with English degrees.

        I also have to say that I’m not sure what public speaking has to do with an English degree – it wasn’t part of my degree course. It’s a shame that teacher put you off.

    2. JustaTech*

      Oh no….
      Clicker training is for dogs and (maybe) cats, not people.

      (I once went to a professional conference where one of the talks was on clicker training and the presenter asked me to use the clicker when she did a small motion. It was much harder than I expected to only click when she did the motion and not just to the rhythm she set up.)

        1. JustaTech*

          That clicker training is harder to do than it looks, or that clicker training isn’t for people who are in human-mode?
          Or that clicker training shouldn’t be done with dogs either?

  18. H.Regalis*

    Think[s] it’s okay to use their position to carry out personal agendas

    Rule of thumb: Don’t do that.

  19. MagicEyes*

    I hate this! One time I gave a public talk and someone in the audience counted my “ums” and told me afterwards. :-( It did make me a lot more aware of when I say “um,” but I also notice too much when other people do it. It’s like a curse that will never be lifted.

  20. Chirpy*

    This was bad enough in high school speech class, where I had a great teacher and it was done once, more like a timed challenge with the purpose of getting you to notice those verbal pauses. Not by your boss nitpicking your speech. Ugh.

  21. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Oh good grief. I’ve done public speaking, I’ve given talks to whole halls full of people and yeah, there’s some filler in it. If you try to eliminate every single instance of filler it sounds unnatural – like a computer speech synthesiser is doing it.

    Additionally, if someone is counting every instance of ‘umm’ then they are not listening – which I’d say is far more of a foul.

    1. HonorBox*

      Yes and yes! Even the most public speaker will fill now and then. And if the boss was trying to help people be better speakers, they’d be better off paying attention to the full content and context of the talk and giving feedback. Paying attention to umms and ahhs means your brain is only focused on that.

  22. HonorBox*

    Coaching people to be better public speakers is
    a) not the job of the boss in most workplaces
    b) not going to work if people are being shamed for parts of it
    c) not helpful if people are being forced into it
    d) not helpful if public speaking isn’t part of their regular work

  23. carrot cake*

    I didn’t read the update, but I can’t help but wonder how often people like this slip up by their own standards when no one is around to see or hear it.

  24. HSE Compliance*

    The *only* time I have coached someone on saying uh/um less is when it was quite literally every 2-3 word that they said. And that was in private, not in front of everyone. The reason I did it was because it was legitimately difficult to follow what they were saying.

    In a group setting for a more typical use of uhs/ums? Not helpful as a general rule.

  25. JP*

    One of the higher ups in my company who has to give presentations uses “you know” constantly, the same way people use “like” or “uh” as filler. I think there’s actually a name for it, but I can’t remember it and I have no idea how to start to Google it. I didn’t notice it at first, but after five minutes I decided to start to count the number of times he said it in a five minute span. It was a very high number.

    I was thinking at first that maybe it’s because people tend to speak too quickly during presentations and are worried about silences lasting more than a half a second. I worry about that, too, but I also worry that allowing too long of a silence gives the opportunity for unwelcome interruptions and interjections from the audience.

    1. Antilles*

      It’s exactly that people get worried about silences. When people give presentations, they get a bit of nerves and they unconsciously speed up. So then even leaving a half second of dead silence feels like an absolute eternity that needs to be filled with something, anything, words like uh.
      I would also note that if it even crosses your mind to ask the question “wait, am I leaving too much silence that’ll get an interruption”, the answer is almost certainly no. Even when you’re actively asking questions and trying to invite audience response, it’ll usually be a couple seconds before you get an answer. So the kind of pause that would invite audience response is *much* longer than you would assume.

  26. Sunflower*

    If I can get away with it, I’d say Uh, Um, or Like every third word just to annoy her.

    The boss is treating adult professionals like children and she’s the teacher in speech class. Unless you’re preparing a speech in front of a conference and need coaching (not shaming), she should not do this.

  27. GonePecan*

    When uhs and ums are excessively used is definitely a pet peeve of mind. I had a manager that did this. At her staff meetings which were not interactive and basically just an information dump, I would count the uhs and ums just so I would pay attention. Last record I have was 80 in 22 minutes which works out to 218 per hour. There are definitely cases of a slight word filler but this was bad in my opinion. While I think excessive use should be addressed, the manner in which the manager is for the OP is definitely NOT the way to do it!

  28. Angstrom*

    I just saw this in a Harvard Business Review article. Seems to summarize the current discussion:

    “Vocal disfluencies, commonly described as filler words, are a common point of contention in public speaking. Some people disparage them as weak and hesitant, and others defend them as authentic and genuine.”

  29. Radiolarion*

    I do a lot of public speaking coaching for grad students and other academic trainees, and I actually like to suggest that they add in deliberate filler words if they tend to over-rely on a written script and then come across as stiff and rehearse. If you write out a script that sounds like a normal person talks, with a few judicious ‘ums’ and ‘ah’s, you can sound spontaneous and confident without having to give up the script that makes you feel secure! I firmly believe that this is a useful hack, but some senior colleagues absolutely jumped down my throat when they heard me giving this advice to one of my students. Not as extreme as what this letter is describing but the puritanical attitude around filler words rang a bell…

  30. Alexis Carrington Colby*

    I worked at this awful small company about 10 years where one of my supervisors was high on power (she was actually pretty young) and was such a hard-ass for the smallest things. She would always get on my case, and another coworker, who used “ummms” in meetings.

    Cut to today, where I see these young men I work with who are terrible at speaking for presentations. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel bothered by it.

  31. Willem Dafriend*

    I have some cognitive and memory issues from long covid that mean I can lose words or have a hard time talking fluidly, especially when I’m tired from a day in the office. If I worked for someone like this, I would be in hell.

    I use a lot of filler words so I don’t lose the thread of a sentence, the alternative is long midsentence silences where I forget what I was talking about, or writing down a script and then reading my prepared speech.

    I’m definitely not the only one who has trouble speaking fluidly for some reason they can’t change, and with long covid being such an issue, more people have these problems than did when this letter was new. In addition to being cruel and unhelpful, something like this could also be a disability discrimination issue.

    1. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

      Oh my yes, you are very correct. Brain fog is an entirely too cute term for the horror of starting a sentence and not remembering where it was going.

  32. Masha*

    In sixth grade (almost 30 years ago) my English teacher pulled this, announcing that we would be asked questions and could not say “um” or “like.” Come my turn, she asks for a definition, let’s say of a yak. I say “It’s like a cow, but it’s larger and has longer hair…” whatever, using the word “like” to mean “similar to.” My understanding was the ban on “like” was as a filler word. The whole class laughed at me. To this day I feel ashamed and extremely confused about whether I misunderstood the assignment.

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