I used to say “um” and “uh” a lot. The British educational system used a little encouragement and massive amounts of discipline and public humiliation to get me to stop. These days, when I’m fumbling for words, I tend to just stop mid sentence until I figure out what to say.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks misinterpret this pause to mean that I’m done talking and then start talking in my place.

This became a common cause of frustration.

I’ve recently been reading a few books about something called “discourse analysis”. Discourse analysis studies the back and forth of conversation. These books each spend chapters on how ums and uhs are used so that folks know when to wait for a speaker to finish and when to start talking.

Sunuva…

I guess I have to figure out how to add the darn things back in.