5 Ways to Cut 'Um' and 'Uh' From Your Speech

Ever rewatched a recording of yourself and winced at how many times you said "uh… so… um…"? Filler words happen to everyone. The problem is volume. One or two are natural, but when they land in every sentence, listeners lose focus and you come across as unsure.

Why do filler words happen?

Fillers aren't so much a bad habit as a time-buying signal. While you figure out what to say next, the silence feels uncomfortable, so you fill it with sound. The real cause isn't your mouth — it's the feeling that silence is dangerous. That's why just resolving "I won't say um" rarely works.

Five ways to cut them

1. Treat silence as a comma, not a mistake

A half-second to one-second pause between thoughts feels far shorter to listeners than it does to you. It actually reads as calm and deliberate. The moment you allow silence, half your fillers disappear.

2. Keep sentences short

Fillers leak out when you try to deliver a long sentence in one breath and get stuck mid-way. Put one message per sentence and end it — that creates a natural pause to think about the next one.

3. Lock in your first sentence

Fillers cluster at the start. Whether it's a talk or an answer, scripting just the first sentence word-for-word smooths the launch, and that steadiness carries forward.

4. Record and count the frequency

You can't feel your own fillers well. Listen back and count them, and you get a number — "12 per minute." To reduce something, you first have to know the current rate.

5. Slow down

When you talk fast, your thoughts can't keep up with your mouth, and fillers multiply. Slowing down just 10% buys time to choose the next word and noticeably cuts fillers.

How few is few enough?

You don't need zero fillers. None at all actually sounds robotic. The goal is a level that doesn't break the listener's flow — usually two to three per minute or fewer goes unnoticed.

Once you know how many fillers you use, you're halfway to fixing them.

BloomSpeech automatically flags where and how often fillers appear in a recording. Seeing which stretches they cluster in lets you practice just those parts.