How to Stop Saying "Um" on Camera (and When Not to Bother)
6 min read
Short answer Pause silently instead of filling the gap, know your next point before you start (three bullet points are enough), slow down a little, and practice by recording yourself and counting. You'll say "um" less, but rarely never, and that's normal. For video, you don't have to be perfect: VCUTS removes the ums automatically, so you can focus on what you're saying.
You film a video, watch it back, and that's all you hear: "um" before every point, "uh" in the middle of sentences, a "so, um" to start. In person nobody would notice. On camera, it feels like the only thing there is.
Here's why it happens, what it actually does to how you come across, and how to say it less, plus the shortcut for when you just need the video done.
Why we say "um"
"Um" and "uh" aren't a flaw in how you speak; they're part of it. Practically everyone uses them, in language after language, including confident and practiced speakers. They usually appear where the brain is busy planning: at the start of a sentence, before a less common word, or when you're not sure what to say next.
They're also more common than most people realize. In a study of about 192,000 words of conversation, people produced about six disfluencies per 100 words: ums and uhs, repeated words and restarted sentences. The ums and uhs alone came to about 2.6 per 100 words (Bortfeld et al., 2001). At conversational speed, that works out to roughly four or five a minute.
They even carry information. Linguists Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree found that speakers use "uh" to signal a short delay and "um" to signal a longer one (Clark and Fox Tree, 2002). In one corpus of phone calls, a silence followed "um" 74% of the time and "uh" 49% of the time. In conversation, an "um" tells the other person: wait, I'm not done.
Listeners use the signal, too. In experiments, people recognized the next word faster after an "uh" (Fox Tree, 2001) and remembered a story better when it contained fillers (Fraundorf and Watson, 2011).
Why it's worse on camera
- No feedback. Talking to a person, you see them nod and you know you're making sense. A lens gives you nothing, so you fill the silence yourself.
- No one to hold the floor against. The "wait, I'm not done" signal is useless when nobody can interrupt, so on a recording it's pure padding.
- Watching yourself. Seeing your face on the screen while you talk splits your attention between speaking and judging how you look.
- Playback. You hear every filler at once when you watch it back, so they seem far more frequent than they felt.
Does saying "um" actually hurt?
It rarely changes what people understand. It does change how sure of yourself you sound:
- Listeners rated a speaker as less likely to know an answer when it came after a filled pause, more so than after a silent pause of the same length (Brennan and Williams, 1995).
- In a 2022 experiment, adding a filled pause changed how confident a speaker sounded more than pitch or speaking rate did (Kirkland et al., 2022).
- Students rated a fluent lecturer as more effective and felt they had learned more, although their test scores were the same. The less fluent version also differed in posture and eye contact, not only in fillers (Carpenter et al., 2013).
- In an analysis of Spotify podcasts, "um" was among the words that predicted listeners dropping off (Reddy et al., 2021).
On video there's a second cost: time, which short videos have none of. A few fillers sound human; one in every sentence starts to distract from what you're saying.
How to say "um" less
1. Replace it with a pause
A simple habit with a big effect. When you feel an "um" coming, close your mouth and say nothing for a moment. A short silent pause sounds deliberate and calm to a listener, even though it feels long to you. It also gives an editor a clean place to cut.
Keep it short, though. The research is mixed here: one study found that silent pauses made a worse impression than ums, and that no pause at all made the best one (Christenfeld, 1995). So pause briefly, and trim the longer pauses in the edit.
2. Know your next point
Most fillers appear when you're working out what to say next. You don't need a script for that, just the structure: a first line, three points as keywords, and a close, written where you can see them. How to talk on camera without a script shows how.
3. Slow down a little
Speaking quickly leaves your thinking behind, and the fillers fill the gap. Slowing down slightly gives you time to plan the next sentence while you finish this one.
4. Finish your sentences
Many ums live in the joins: "and, um", "so, uh". End each sentence with a full stop in your voice, let your pitch drop, pause, then start the next one cleanly.
5. Practice with a count
Record yourself talking about anything for one minute, play it back and count the fillers. Do it again tomorrow on another topic. Noticing them is most of the work; the count tends to go down on its own once you hear them.
6. Don't aim for zero
Trying never to say "um" can make you freeze, and a frozen speaker sounds worse than one who says "um" now and then. Aim for fewer, and let the edit handle the rest.
For video, you can simply cut it
Unlike a live talk, a video gives you a second chance. Talk the way you talk, and remove the fillers afterwards. VCUTS is an iPhone app that removes ums, pauses, false starts and repeated takes from talking-head videos automatically:
- Pick a video and the ums, uhs and long pauses are folded away in seconds.
- It reads the sentence, so a "like" that means something stays, and you can tell it to keep the fillers that are part of how you talk: "Keep 'like', it's how I talk."
- Tap any cut to hear it and bring it back.
- It works in more than 90 languages, so the French "euh" and the German "äh" go too (fillers by language).
Prefer to cut them yourself? How to remove filler words from a video covers the manual way too.
When to leave them in
In a podcast, an interview or a long conversation, a few fillers keep it sounding like a real conversation. Cutting every one can make people sound clipped and rehearsed. Save the strict edit for short videos, where every second counts, and be gentler everywhere else.
Questions people ask
Why do I say "um" so much on camera?
Talking to a lens gives you no feedback: nobody nods, smiles or asks a question, so you fill the silence yourself while you plan the next sentence. Not knowing exactly what comes next makes it worse, which is why bullet points help.
Is it bad to say "um"?
In conversation, no: everyone does it, and listeners use it as a signal that you are still thinking. But studies find that filled pauses make a speaker sound less confident and less sure of their answer, and in a short video they also cost time, so it is worth cutting them there.
How long does it take to stop saying "um"?
There is no fixed timeline. Recording yourself regularly and pausing silently instead of filling the gap is what brings the count down. Hardly anyone gets rid of fillers completely, and that is fine: in a video you can cut the rest.
How do I stop saying "like" and "you know"?
The same way: notice them first by recording yourself, then replace them with a short silent pause. They are harder to drop than "um" because they are real words, so focus on the ones that pad a sentence without adding meaning.