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Half-OT: Note that words such as "like" and "um" are typically not referred to as stop words in (computational) linguistics. They are called filled pauses, or sometimes floor holders, depending on their function. Liz Shriberg's thesis was - as far as I know - the first extensive treatment of speech disfluencies in the field of computational linguistics.

The term "stop words" is, however, used in information retrieval. Here, it refers to words that appear very frequently in (almost) all documents in a corpus; so frequently in fact that they are taken not to carry any/much information content at all. Examples would be "the", "it", "and" etc. For many tasks in IR, stop words are removed from the document representation because they mostly introduce noise.

As a follow-up to this, my HS English teacher broke me of this by forcing the mantra, "if you are about to say 'um', STOP TALKING'". These works are generally used to fill the speech gap while you are thinking. It seems weird at first to pause, but eventually it becomes natural.

My HS English teacher was even more harsh (but effective) - every time someone said um, ah, like, or any other tic/pause word, she'd immediately cut them off. 'STOP.' 'TRY AGAIN.' 'NO.' etc. She was relentless, forced students to stop, calm down, gather their thoughts, and say it directly. Most students were cured in a few days, and the really bad ones a few weeks at most.

This is generally not a bad thing, though. From my slight applied linguist background: These fillers are generally used in order to establish that the speaker's turn is not yet done. In a conversational situation, having pauses instead of fillers gives the listeners openings into the conversation to become the speaker.

In presentational speeches, fillers aren't so bad, but long pauses IMO are worse. It's a natural thing to have fillers. If you want to have less, just practice more and be more comfortable with what you're talking about.

I would posit that people that say "um" more, came from upbringings where they were more likely to be interrupted the moment they left a gap in conversation. That'd be an interesting study.

Yes. I find in America if you don't keep filling the space with noise when thinking, you lose the chance to finish your thought.

I know girls that talk faster than they can think so every third word is "like". In this case it's not a pause but more of a tick. Sometimes I am in awe of the content density. They can talk for hours and say absolutely nothing.

"Like" is increasingly used to introduce a quotation, particularly in SoCal dialect. It's not necessarily the most elegant use of language, but it's not a pause or a tick.

kristianc was like, "It's not necessarily the most elegant use of language, but it's not a pause or a tick.", but that's not, like, the only use of "like" in American vernacular. It's also used to pause, or to, like, distance yourself from what you're saying.

Nice going... For sentences like your last example, in the past few years I've been hearing "as in" with increasing frequency. I find it quite annoying and would be very curious to learn about its origins, as in how did it start.

Minor interjection: the word you both want is "tic".

As someone who grew up in the suburbs of Southern California, It's been my experience that 'like' it's used to introduce a paraphrase that includes non-verbal communication and/or tones that introduce not-so-subtle comments regarding the paraphrase without directly commenting nor limiting yourself with a direct quotation.

For example, I could say "kristianc was like, OMG it is NOT a pause or a tic, it is SoCal dialect!" in a sarcastic tone and roll my eyes.

edit: This form of communication doesn't translate well into digital form - email, texting, etc. - unless both people are familiar with each other's body language and the dialect to visualize (at a conscious or subconscious level) the meaning.

All communication is to some extent subject to those limitations. Wittgenstein was so like "language acquires meaning through context, bro" but only in his like, later period.

Funny relevance: Taylor Mali at Def Poetry Jam http://youtu.be/SCNIBV87wV4

Believe it or not, you can talk for hours and say absolutely nothing without any disfluencies at all. I don't want to derail this thread into a political argument so I won't mention any specific examples, but I'm sure you can think of some yourself.

+1. More please.

I know girls that talk faster than they can think

Heh, I'm the other way around.

I am from the south so I think I probably pick up on the socal "like" more than people out west who hear it daily, and I distinctly remember listening to Marissa Mayer and attempting to count the instances in which she said it when I heard her speak about 7 or 8 years ago. The talk was very interesting and she didn't use it as a "thinking pause" however it was used very frequently.

Toastmasters is quite helpful for this. I did it for a while and highly recommend it. It's also a great way to practice social skills, generally.

There's an even more low-tech way. Teacher starts calling you out on it. A little "ding" from a bell or similar draws your attention to it, when you wouldn't notice otherwise. After a while, your classmates will start policing each other, and even the quiet ones will speak up so they can play the "game" of avoiding filler words.

We did a similar thing in debate. When one person says 'um', so does everyone else. Stops the habit fairly quickly.

our partner in cx would stand behind us and hit us on top of the head every time we said "um" or "like"

That reminds me very strongly of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdOomYvnyNI&t=1m13s

I had a PM at Google who did debate in high school. In his debate class, everybody would throw a pen at him every time he said "um". He has very precise, articulate diction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtirDMfcOKE

There's also the "Subway Challenge":

Go to a restaurant like Subway where you go along a counter and tell the employee what you want on your food item. The challenge is to get through the whole thing without a single "um", "uh", or similar word. It's VERY easy to say "uhhh.... ummm.... pepper jack cheese!" when asked to make a choice on the spot like that.

I did this and it worked well. Except.. I then started listening back and noticed I was adding filler like "you know what I mean?" instead, which is proving a more insidious problem to stamp out.

I tried a similar thing in high school to stop saying 'like' as a filler word. For me, it completely backfired though - I found myself saying 'like' twice whenever I would have said it once!

I guess doing this as a group (as others have suggested) might work better.

Years later, and the habit went away by itself.

The best way to stop doing something is to become overly conscious of it. I used the same method to get "this" out of my writing.

You've simply replaced one problem with another('umm's with pauses).

(assuming you see this as a problem. I actually think this is an overrated problem IRL.)

Pauses are the opposite of "a problem". They're one of THE MOST effective tools you have as a speaker. Listen to any great speech. Look out for the pauses. Imagine if the impact would've been the same without them.

That is a false equivalence--a rhetorical pause differs from a random pause. Random pauses are certainly preferable to any overt verbal tics.

I'm not a speech therapist or linguist etc. so wasn't aware of any formal distinction. I can tell you that "random" pauses, as you call them, are as useful as considered pauses. They slow down what's being said, which makes the speaker appear calmer, more considered, and so on.

What you say goes against common sense and experience. Pausing randomly in the middle of a train of thought is not on the same level as a carefully considered pause. There was a real-life case study of the difference on the Language Log where the subject was a presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. Kerry spoke at a moderate rate and made careful use of pauses--he had longer pauses before beginning his answers to the moderator's question, and he had shorter, calculated pauses for rhetorical effect. By contrast, Bush launched directly into his answer before hardly taking a breath, spoke hastily, tripping over his own words, pausing frequently and inappropriately during sentences in ways that did not suggest composure but rather confusion and incompetence. Obviously that impression was not helped by his other deficiencies as an speaker, but it was a major flaw in its own right.

Bush launched directly into his answer before hardly taking a breath, spoke hastily, tripping over his own words, pausing frequently and inappropriately during sentences in ways that did not suggest composure but rather confusion and incompetence

I pretty much had this speech impediment and had to see a speech language pathologist to get it fixed :) Your description contrasting the two types of pauses nails it.

What I wrote about pauses is about pauses as opposed to ums and ahs. The unstated assumption is that the rest of the package (message structure, body language and so on, as per PG's speech) is in sync.

While Bush is indeed a really good example of how not to do it, his failing was not pausing. His failing was, as you say, confusion and incompetence.

See my post below.

His failing was, as you say, confusion and incompetence

The same could be argued about 'umms': that the 'umms' aren't the problem, confusion and incompetence is.

Lol :-) I didn't say umms are bad. I said cutting them out can be good. If you're looking to improve then that's one something (one of many) you might seek to address.

Another might be how you make a statement. The one you made here is positional. It's positional in that I feel you're trying to push me into telling you you're right.

I may well be wrong, but that's what I feel when I read your comment above.

So another something one might improve, in addition to eliminating umms, is to move from a positional stance to a principled stance. [START Starship Trooper voice] Would you like to know more?[END Starship Trooper voice] :-)

I realise that the OP is about a speech, but I think universally dismissing "um"s isn't justified. A speech is not the same thing as a dialogue. Conversational fillers are useful to hold the floor (not that there aren't better ways than "um" but that doesn't mean "um" isn't useful or ineffectual).

I guess that depends on your objective. In either case (communicating a message, or arbitrary conversation) you can choose to be ok, or you can choose to be exceptional.

Ums in either case are a distraction, and to some annoying. The degree obviously varies from person to person. Being a good conversationalist is as counter-intuitive as skiing (where you have to lean forward when facing downhill) in that a good conversationalist is in fact a good listener, and only interjects to elicit more conversation from the other party. So... in a way you're right. Uming a lot when you're really just listening isn't going to affect anything ;-)

Making a speech is about communicting a message. There are many ways to structure that message, for example SCIPAB, but the structure and supporting slides, if any, can be spectacularly annihilated by a mediocre delivery.

To be exceptional you need to work on your delivery. That means slowing way down, not using ums and ahs, maintaining eye contact (I've addressed a 5000-strong crowd, so believe me when I say it's irrespective of the size of the audience), and getting your body language right.

Depends entirely on how good you want to be :-)

If you want to be exceptional you could do worse that start with The Voice Book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0571195253/ - Amazon.com is sold out). It's been derided somewhat elsewhere in this thread, but Toastmasters is another hugely useful route.

[Edit - forgot to describe SCIPAB]

(S)ituation

(C)omplication

(I)mplication

(P)osition

(A)ction

(B)enefit

There are plenty of smooth talkers who can give a good speech, without any umms, and yet leave the audience unfulfilled. Obviously there are just as many bad speeches full of too many umms.

I think there is a middle ground where 'umms' and general fillers make the communication more authentic and seemingly less rehearsed. Most people don't like listening to a robot, not even a well-rehearsed one.

My high school AP English teacher deducted a full 1% from presentation assignments for every "um" and "like" (except where the use of "like" was contextually appropriate).

Nobody got higher than a D on the first presentation. Nobody got lower than a B after that.