Replace um with a closed mouth
The usual advice is good because it is mechanical: when you feel an um coming, stop. Breathe. Then say the next word. The silence feels longer to you than to anyone listening.
Ums are often a fear of silence, not a lack of vocabulary. Practice in low-stakes talk — a voice note, a meeting standup — not only on stage. The goal is to make a closed mouth feel safer than a filled pause.
Record, then listen once without fixing it
Speakers who never hear themselves keep the same fillers. Record a two-minute explanation of something you know. Do not edit it on the first listen. Count the ums.
That number is more useful than a generic “stop saying like.” After you know your pattern, cut a practice take with a filler-word remover so you can hear the same script without the stalls. The contrast is the lesson.
What to count besides um
Track filled pauses (um, uh) separately from hedges (you know, like, kind of). One is a silence problem. The other is a hedging problem. You will over-correct if you treat them as one habit.
A useful weekly check is a two-minute voice note on the same prompt. Same topic, same length, new count. If the number is not moving, you are editing files and calling it practice.
- Pause instead of filling the gap
- Count ums on a raw recording once a week
- Use an editor for published files, not as the drill
- Keep fillers that are part of the voice on purpose
Do not confuse editing with practice
Cleaning a YouTube take is the right move for the audience. It does not train the next take. If you only ever ship edited speech, the live version (interviews, workshops) will still stall.
Use the editor for published files. Use the pause-and-breathe drill for live speech. Searches for “how to stop using filler words” are about the drill. The cutter is a separate, honest offer at the bottom of this page.
A weekly drill that actually moves the number
Pick one prompt you can repeat: explain your product, your research, or last week’s work in two minutes. Record it on your phone. Do not edit the first listen. Write down um count and like count separately.
The next week, same prompt, new take. If the number is not moving, you are only cleaning files and calling it practice. Use this site to hear a cut version of the same take so you know what the speech sounds like without stalls — then go back to the pause drill for live talk.