To err is human

People are often concerned when they do interviews about what they see as excessive 'umming' and 'erring'. But this really isn't a problem. It's much better to 'um' and 'er' and to take your time, choosing your words carefully.

Just think about two UK politicians: John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister never 'ums' during his interviews - but as a result he speaks too quickly, says things he shouldn't say and is often difficult to understand. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, on the hand, regularly inserts these pauses into his comments. The result is that he takes his time, chooses his words carefully and emphasises key words and phrases.

In fact, there is new evidence to suggest that these 'disfluencies' as they are known, help listeners to focus on the words and sentences being spoken. At Edinburgh University's School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, subjects were invited to listen to two speakers. An hour after hearing typical sentences, the subjects remembered 62 per cent of the words correctly where 'er's had been inserted into the sentence recited by one speaker. This compares to 55 per cent where there were no such comments.

Certainly, as a print journalist, I'd rather people included ums and ers simply because it gives me more time to write down their comments.

One media training client I worked with spoke so eloquently and without any apparent pauses that we had to actively insert some 'er's into his comments to make them sound more human and less pat and rehearsed. He was surprised when I asked him to do this and rather sceptical but thanked me for it in the end.

Obviously it's not good to stumble and halt too much but including these speech 'speed bumps' into your comments really helps people take in what you're trying to tell them.