Picture a swinging rope bridge, the kind you might cross while hiking on an exotic vacation. That’s what your um’s and ah’s are. They are simply a suspension bridge connecting your sentences. They are sound bridges.
Do you find yourself crossing those bridges, either unwillingly or unwittingly? Do you think if you were more conscious of what you were doing and why – likely trying to avoid silence at all costs – you might be able to quell the urge to use a sound bridge?
Clients ask me all the time to help them with um’s and ah’s. I would say that, realistically speaking, 80% of the time it’s not an issue. It’s either so minor, it’s barely noticeable, or it’s not noticeable at all. Only when those pesky sound bridges are distracting to the audience do we even really venture to work on it.
Working on it means two things: 1) the speaker becoming keenly aware of what’s coming out of their mouth; and 2) the speaker disciplining her/himself to be okay with a pause in between sentences.
Pauses are not a big deal. To the audience, a one- or two-second pause goes right over their heads, it doesn’t even register. Yet, I know that to the speaker, it can feel like one or two days.
Here’s the rub, speakers: getting comfortable with a hard stop on the sentence you’re finishing, followed by a hard start on the next sentence is all you need to be aware of and disciplined about. So for the 20% or so of you who find yourselves crossing sound bridges more often than you like, give it a try and see if you can get yourselves comfortable with a quick pause with no sound.
Trust me, it’ll be okay. It’s less scary than crossing one of those swinging rope bridges!
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