How to Stop Saying Um and Uh When Presenting

Everyone says um and uh. The question is why — and once you understand why, the fix is obvious.

Filler words are not a bad habit. They are a symptom of uncertainty. They appear at the exact moments you do not know what comes next. They buy your brain time while it figures out what your mouth is supposed to say.

This means the solution is not to stop saying um. The solution is to not need the time.

Why filler words cluster where they do

Pay attention to when your ums appear. It is almost never in the middle of a sentence you know cold. It is almost always:

At the transition between two sections
When you are asked a question you did not expect
On slides you have not practiced as much as the others
At the beginning of your presentation, before you find your rhythm

These are the moments of uncertainty. The filler word is your brain’s way of holding the floor while it catches up.

This is why advice like “just pause instead of saying um” only partially works. A conscious pause is better than an um. But neither is as good as knowing exactly what you are going to say next.

The real fix: reduce uncertainty

1. Practice the transitions more than the slides

The content of each slide is usually fine. You know your material. What you do not know as well is how to get from one slide to the next.

The transition — the last sentence of one section and the first sentence of the next — is where most filler words live. It is the moment your brain has to switch tracks and it is not sure where the next track is.

Fix this explicitly. Say your transitions out loud, ten times each, until they are automatic. “So that is the problem. Here is why it matters now.” Say it until you do not have to think about it.

2. Record yourself and count

Record a full run of your presentation. Watch it back and count the filler words. Mark where they appear.

You will see the pattern immediately. The ums cluster on the same slides, the same transitions, every time. Those are the weak spots. Go back and practice those sections specifically — not the whole presentation, just the parts where you are losing the thread.

3. Know your opening cold

The beginning of a presentation is when filler words are worst. You are nervous, the audience is unfamiliar, and your brain is still warming up.

Write out your opening three sentences exactly. Not as a script you will read — as a sentence you will memorize. Know it so well that you can say it half asleep.

A clean, confident opening does two things: it settles your nerves faster, and it buys you the runway to get into the part of the presentation you know better.

4. Slow down

Most people speak faster when they are nervous. Faster speech means less time to think, which means more ums.

Deliberately slow your pace by 20%. You will feel like you are going too slowly. You are not. Slow speech reads as confidence. Fast speech reads as anxiety — even when the words are right.

Slowing down also makes natural pauses feel less awkward. A half-second pause instead of an um sounds intentional. It is one of the fastest ways to change how you are perceived.

5. Let the silence be

The pause you are afraid of is much shorter than it feels.

When you lose your place or forget what comes next, the silence feels enormous from the inside. From the audience’s perspective it is usually one or two seconds — unremarkable, often unnoticed.

Practice sitting in the silence. Record yourself deliberately pausing for two full seconds between sections. Watch it back. It does not look strange. It looks like you are giving the audience time to absorb what you just said.

The um fills silence you do not need to fill.

What does not work

Rubber band on the wrist. Punishing yourself for filler words does not address why they appear. It just makes you anxious about saying them, which makes you more nervous, which makes you say more of them.

Just pause instead. Better than an um but it treats the symptom, not the cause. If you do not know what comes next, a pause only delays the problem.

Listening to yourself in real time. Monitoring your own speech while you are speaking takes cognitive resources away from the content. The more you think “don’t say um,” the worse it gets.

The fastest path to fewer filler words

Practice until you know what comes next before you need it.

That is it. Every technique above is a version of the same thing: reducing the moments where your brain does not know what your mouth is supposed to say next.

This means:

Practice the full presentation out loud, not in your head
Record yourself and find the specific weak spots
Drill the transitions more than the content
Know your opening cold

Five full practice runs out loud will do more for your filler words than any amount of self-monitoring in the moment.

For Q&A specifically

Q&A is where filler words are hardest to control because you cannot practice the exact questions in advance.

What you can do:

Prepare answers to the questions you expect and say them out loud until they feel natural
Use ChatGPT or Claude to generate the ten hardest questions someone could ask and practice answering each one out loud
Learn a bridging phrase you can say while you think — “That’s a great question, let me think about that for a second” — and practice saying it without an um

The goal is not to eliminate the pause. It is to fill it with something intentional instead of something automatic.

How long does it take

One week of deliberate practice — five or six full runs out loud, each one recorded — will produce a noticeable change.

The filler words will not disappear entirely. They will cluster more narrowly, in fewer places, and you will know exactly where they are and why.

That is the goal. Not zero ums. Enough control that the filler words do not undermine the confidence of what you are saying.

PresenterPrep is a voice AI coach that gives you real-time feedback on filler words, pacing, and delivery. Practice your presentation out loud and hear exactly where you are losing the thread.