Why do people say um and uh?

Our word-fumbles offer subtle clues about our personalities and intentions.

Why do people say um and uh?

Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Um, guys. I have some information to share with you, and fair warning, it's, uh, going to make you scrutinize your speech for several days.

You know when you're searching for a word, or trying to say something more nicely than you actually mean it, or trying to make up your mind after you've already started speaking? Whether you reach for an "um" or an "uh" in those situations might depend on whether you're male or female.

Our verbal pauses actually speak volumes: "Like," as eighth-grade English teachers will tell you, makes the speaker sound young or ditzy; "sort of" smacks of uncertainty. But according to the linguist Mark Liberman, who works at the University of Pennsylvania and blogs at Language Log, even a difference as subtle as the one between "um" and "uh" provides clues about the speaker's gender, language skills, and even life experience.

For his analyses, Liberman has been parsing 14,000 transcribed phone conversations, which together comprise more than 26 millions words and involve about 12,000 speakers from all over the U.S.

Back in 2005, he found that usage of "uh" increases with age, but at every age, men say it more than women do. Meanwhile, usage of "um" decreases with age, but female speakers said it more than male ones at each stage in life:

Usage of 'Uh' and 'Um' Among Men and Women

Why do people say um and uh?
Frequency of uh/um usage, by age, indexed to the frequency of the usage of "the." (Mark Liberman)

Overall, he found that women say "um" 22 percent more than men do, but men say "uh" more than twice as often as women do. A 2011 study by Eric Acton yielded similar results.

When the two genders are speaking to each other, they try to meet in the middle: "Males use uh about 14 percent less often when talking with a female rather than a male, and females use uh about about 20 percent more often when talking with a male rather than a female," Liberman writes. (There's not nearly as much accommodation with "um.")

What Liberman found, essentially, was that young men speak like old women: "The rate of 'um' usage for the younger men is almost the same as the rate of 'um' usage for the older women."

It's hard to determine what, exactly, this says about how the two genders think about themselves—or their words. One 2001 paper found that men use all kinds of "language fillers" more frequently than women do. But a study published in June found that while men and women say either "um" or "uh" roughly equal amounts, women say "you know," "like," and "I mean" more often. That study suggested that people who use these types of "discourse markers" are more empathetic and conscientious—two traits women are often thought to be socialized to exhibit.

Liberman also posits that "um" and "uh" portray language fluency and intelligence differently. "People tend to use UM when they're trying to decide what to say, and UH when they're trying to decide how to say it," he told me in an email. "As people get older, they have less trouble deciding what to say (because they know more stuff), and more trouble deciding how to say it (because they know more words and fixed phrases, and so have a harder time making a choice). As a result, older people use fewer UMs and more UHs."

Thus, one theory is that perhaps, "At any given (adult) age, men are more linguistically experienced than women, and so use UM and UH as if they were older," he says. "OR MAYBE: Women are more communicatively circumspect than men, and therefore more likely to pause before deciding what to say; but women are more linguistically fluent than men, and therefore less likely to pause while deciding what words to use."

A 2000 study found that people use "um" to signal long pauses and "uh" to signal short ones, so perhaps women just intend to hint at a major delay. Women also use "assenting murmurs" more frequently in conversation—uh-huhs and mm-hmms—and they laugh 60 percent more than men do. Maybe the "ums," with their long mmm, their careful consideration, and their prudence, are simply an extension of women's overall linguistic cordiality. In an analysis of the most-commonly used words and sounds in male and female conversations, Liberman found that the most distinctive one for women was "[laughter]" and the one for men was "uh." The words "gosh" and "goodness" made an appearance on the female list, while "shit" popped up on the male one.

This, Liberman notes, meshes with a 2013 study that analyzed women's and men's Facebook posts and found that men are most distinguished by their use of "fuck," "wishes," and "xbox," while women stood out for words like "shopping," "excited," and "<3."

Most Strongly Correlated Facebook Words, by Gender

Why do people say um and uh?
Words correlated most strongly with the postings of women (top) and men on Facebook. (PLoS)

Facebook isn't a one-to-one representation of real speech, of course, but it's telling that even when they're being their best selves, men seem to be a lot less concerned with appearing happy, congenial, or "blessed."

Women also tend to be linguistic pioneers, Liberman says, ushering in massive societal word-choice shifts long before the men start to catch on. So it could be that "um" is overtaking "uh" among everyone, and women just happen to be leading the way.

It's a little shocking how reminiscent some of these verbal quirks are of Sheryl Sandberg's admonishments to female leaders that they should smile more and act generally more communal than their male counterparts.

There's probably no overcoming these little rhetorical flags for the long-term. (Going back to the eighth-grade teacher, remember how her threats to deduct points for every "like" in a class presentation only made you say it more?)

Still, I think it might be fun to try to speak like a man for a day. By which I mean, "Uh, I wish I could go play my fucking xbox."

Why do people say um and uh?

The last time I hosted a workshop, the session was recorded so that attendees could access the material later. When I played the recording for myself, I was shocked at how many times I had uttered um. I couldn’t consciously remember using this filler word, but I knew that to become a more effective presenter, I had to eliminate it from my public speaking.

And I’m not alone. Nearly everyone, at some point, has used fillers when speaking; it’s a reality that’s been prevalent throughout history. But what causes us to use these fillers? Do they serve an important language function? Or does anxiety and nervousness play a vital role? According to experts, it’s a little of both.

“General anxiety makes us extremely uncomfortable with silence when we are speaking in front of people,” says Joanne Mathews, a public speaking coach from Oregon. “In this case, the fillers are our futile attempt to keep everyone’s attention.” She hints at the irony of this since silence between phrases is much more enthralling for an audience than ums and uhs.

In Mathews’ experience, the more impromptu the speaking opportunity, the more fillers we use. “Think of how most of us come across when we are put on the spot with little or no time to prepare,” she says. “We are thinking as we speak and, therefore, need to buy time to find the right words.”

Colorado-based speaking coach Andi O’Conor, who has worked with countless Fortune 100 companies, says this even affects people who are experienced speakers. “They go into a meeting or a presentation and they try to wing it.” What happens, she says, is that they end up saying uh or um because they don’t know what they’re going to say next.

George Lakoff, a distinguished professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, says uh, um, oh, ah and say are words in English that have a meaning in the pragmatics of communication. “These have been studied in great detail by linguists,” he says.

Pragmatics involves the social language skills we use in our daily interactions with others, including what we say, how we say it, our body language, and choosing and changing our language based on a given situation. Planning what to say is considered a pragmatic marker, with um and uh being two of these specialized markers. Some experts go as far as calling uh and um conversation managers and legitimate words. Even though they believe using too many fillers can be distracting, they suggest that “by signaling a delay is coming, a speaker avoids a silent gap in conversation that might otherwise prove confusing to a listener.”

But many professional speaking coaches suggest silence is more powerful. In O’Conor’s opinion, the most influential speakers know how to do a full stop on something before starting the next sentence, for impact. She also says silence can be a great service to your listeners because cognitively our brains are always a few beats behind during a speech, and so “we need pauses in order to digest and process the information.”

So, the big question is this: Can we stop ourselves from using fillers? If so, how?

According to O’Conor, aside from practicing and being fully prepared there’s plenty we can do both mentally and physically to prevent fillers from creeping into our speech. The simplest technique, which she uses with her own clients, is envisioning punctuation as we talk. “Imagine putting an invisible period on the end of your sentences while you speak. Imagine that you can see periods or commas in your speech as you’re speaking,” says O’Conor. She says this can be an instant cure for some people.

She also recommends three additional steps: power posing, smiling and countering any negative thoughts with positive ones. She suggests Amy Cuddy’s Wonder Woman pose, where you stand with your hands on your hips right before giving a speech or presentation. Cuddy, a social psychologist, has found that the pose increases your testosterone and lowers your cortisol. It also opens up your chest so you can breathe and speak better. Smiling increases your serotonin, which is the happy drug for your brain. Together, power posing and smiling can make all the difference in the world.

Mentally, there are what O’Conor calls the three gremlins: imposter syndrome (or self-doubt), thinking that your presentation or speech is boring and worrying that listeners might judge you. To psych yourself up, she recommends recording yourself saying, “I belong in this room, I have an interesting talk, and everyone in this room wants me to succeed,” and listening to it right before giving a speech or presentation.

Mathews thinks we spend too much time worrying about the ums and uhs and not enough time on other aspects of our public speaking. “Too many of us have been taught that ‘it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.’ Wrong! It’s absolutely what you say.” Technique is important, but the most critical part of a great presentation is the message. “Remember that, like it or not, public speaking is the most effective way to bring about change. Speakers need to look at time in front of others as a way to bring about the change they want to see,” she says. Once a speaker has connected to why they are in front of an audience and what they want to accomplish, development and delivery come much more easily. 

This article was published in January 2018 and has been updated. Photo by GaudiLab/Shutterstock

Why do people say um and uh?

Crystal Ponti