Actors, comedians, and politicians all have memorized scripts, lines, routines, and soundbites. I'm very curious as to what hathawsh's eventual answer to baxtr's question will be, because I consider their comment at the top of this thread to be utterly counterproductive and unhelpful. Oftentimes, HN threads have a top comment that is contradictory to the post for the sake of being contradictory. In this case, the comment is both contradictory and harmful. Literally no one learning or teaching communication says that "uh" and "um" are good habits. In fact, I would go even further than the article asserts and claim that I succeed socially the more silent I am. People are self-absorbed; they like people who listen to them.