THE TOOLKIT
Vocalized Pauses: Fillers

Vocalized pauses are breaks in verbal communications that interrupt your thoughts. Vocalized pauses are identified as fillers such as: “ahh …, and …, uhh …, and umm …” Too many of these fillers cause you to sound unknowledgeable, uninterested, and lacking confidence. That said, little pauses are a part of spontaneous human speech. We call them “comfortable little pillows” that are thrown around our speech pattern to avoid sounding robotic. There are few global constants in language, but this is one of them. You can find these “fillers” all over the world.

– Michael Erard

English	ah, um, so, and, oh, like, you know, I mean
French	euh
Serbian / Croatian	ovay
Turkish	mmmmm
Hebrew	ehhh
Japanese	eto, ano
Spanish	este
Mandarin	neige, jeige
Dutch / German	uh, um, mmm
Swedish	eh, ah, aah, m, mm, hmm, ooh, a, oh
Norwegian	e, eh, m, hm
“Think Tank: Just Like, Er, Words, Not, Um, Throwaways.” – Michael Erard

The following is a list of the five most frequently used vocalized pauses and how they are used in daily sentence structure in the English language.

I’m going to begin, uhh…	I’m going to begin, uhh… with today’s agenda. First I’d like to begin, uhh… by saying that the issues are essential and important. I’d also like to begin, uhh… by saying I believe that we can improve efficiency and profit margins.
Thee, uhh…	Thee, uhh… issues on thee, uhh… agenda are essential and important to thee, uhh… company and thee, uhh… personnel. We can improve thee, uhh… morale and thee, uhh… efficiency and raise thee, uhh… profit margin.
I, uhh…	I, uhh… believe the issues on the agenda are essential and important. I, uhh… am focusing on the company and its personnel. I, uhh… believe that we can improve morale and efficiency. I, uhh… also want to raise profit margins.
and, uhh…	The issues on today’s agenda are essential and, uhh... important to the company and, uhh… personnel. We can improve our morale and, uhh… efficiency and, uhh... raise our profits, and uhh… it won’t take much effort.
Between Sentences	The issues on the agenda are both essential and important … ahh … I am referring to both the company and personnel … uhh … I believe that we can improve both the morale and efficiency … umm … Also, profits will rise.