Cutting fillers: um, ah, like

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

Everyone uses fillers. The question is whether they cover real thinking or nervous noise. Too many of them make a speaker sound unsure, even when the content is solid. Here is how to find yours and deal with them.

Why fillers appear

Three causes account for most of them. You are working out the next sentence while speaking it. You are unsure what the next point is. Or you are nervous, and the mouth keeps moving while the mind looks for a foothold. The first two are planning problems. The third needs calming down, and planning helps with that too.

Find your fillers

Record yourself giving part of the talk. Present Yourself guidance is to record every presentation, even on audio only, and to watch for tics. Listen back and make a tally on paper each time you hear one. Note the sentence it sat in. The count is often higher than people expect, and the clusters are more useful than the total.

Replace, do not delete

When you cut a filler, you do not want a silence that feels like a hole. You want a pause that feels deliberate. Stop after the point, breathe, then start the next sentence with its first word. The room hears a pause. You hear a long gap, and that difference is the whole trick.

Practise the joins

Fillers gather at the joins: after one point ends, before a new one starts, after a question, and at the top of an answer. Write the opening line of each section on a card. When you know the first sentence, the gap before it shrinks.

Steps

1. Record a three-minute run-through of the talk.
2. Tally each filler and note the sentence it sits in.
3. Rewrite the first line of each section so it begins with the point itself.
4. Rehearse the joins, pausing silently between sections, then say the first line.
5. Record again and compare the tally.

A worked example

Before: "So, um, the next thing I want to, like, talk about is the lighting."

After: "The next thing is lighting. [pause] Here is why it matters for your shoot."

The second version is shorter, the point comes first, and the pause does the job the filler was doing.

Common mistakes

• Swapping one filler for another. "Right", "okay" and "basically" are fillers too.
• Cutting so hard that you sound robotic. Some natural hesitation makes you sound like a person.
• Trying to stop mid-flow. Fix the plan, not the sentence you are speaking.
• Checking the tally during the talk. Count afterwards, when you can do something about it.

For the bigger picture on delivery, read the power of the pause and vocal variety: the rollercoaster. If you want to hear the difference live, a media training day is built around practice interviews.

Related guides

• Pace: why you are still too fast when you speak
• The power of the pause in speaking and presenting
• Vocal variety: the rollercoaster
• Projecting 10% more without shouting
• Smiling voice
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.