Um… those irritating verbal pauses.

There is a certain kind of disorder going around that afflicts almost everyone – the all too familiar albeit distracting verbal pauses. Personal development blogger, Steve Pavlina, aptly defines verbal pauses: “Verbal pauses are when you say um, ah, uh, you know, etc. While your brain is searching for the next words to say, your mouth keeps on going and blurts out meaningless extra syllables. Verbal pauses also include bridge words like and, but, and so. If you say one of these words and hang on it before you actually know what you’re going to say next, it’s a bridge word. Another form of verbal pause is the repeated word. You keep repeating your last word until you figure out what to say next, like and and and. “

According to Michael Erard, author of the book “Um…”, everyone suffers from speech disfluency and an average person will commit somewhere between 7 to 22 slips of the tongue each day and from two to to four times a day will struggle, for an embarrassing length of time, to find the right word or name. I am not surprised as I hear a lot of verbal pauses coming from almost every person in the street and even from TV newscasters, politicians and celebrities. Admittedly, on rare occasions, I also suffer from it but um, I am trying to get rid of it.

According to Pavlina, the way to eliminate verbal pauses is two-fold: awareness and practice. Listen and be cognizant of the verbal pauses when you watch the news of rom conversations with friends or co-workers. Ask someone to count your verbal pauses the next time you engage in a conversation and you might be surprised how many you have blurted out. Once you become aware of it, practice, practice, practice. You may even ask someone to point it out whenever you say um, ah, like so you could track your progress. Pavlina also suggested that a silent pause can be a simple replacement for a verbal pause: "When your brain stops feeding intelligible words to your mouth, stop talking. Don’t say um, ah, y’know, sooooo, etc. If you’re addicted to verbal pauses, this may feel uncomfortable at first, but you eventually get used to it. Remember that you don’t have to fill every minute of airtime with noise.”

For me, a person who commits verbal pauses sound less intelligent and should go to jail. Um, just kidding!