Removing Useless Words From Your Speech

In this next is the series of bad habit blogs we will look at your speech.  Have you notice how some people, almost at the moment they open their mouth, sound somehow intelligent? Even if you are not a great philosopher, you can mimic that – getting rid of this bad habit is a major step

The Problem: When they talk, most people will pad their sentences with useless words and sounds. These words come in three types

1) Brain farts, these are the meaningless sounds that appear at any place in the stream of speech, sounds like: “Uhh”, “Ehhh” and “hmm”. If you do too many brain farts, your speech can become annoying and in the worst case incoherent as people “tune out” when you open your mouth.

2) Fill words. These are words that add no additional meaning to a sentence. Americans, Californians in particular, are prone to using these words. Good examples are:

• “Like” – The word: “Like”s mean to “resemble” or to “prefer”. It is NOT be be used a spoken period or comma in every sentence.
• “You Know” – Very approval seeking. Shows neediness and is highly annoying to the listener
• “Totally” – A highly annoying fill word that has recently become widely used in the states.
• “Sort of” and “Kind of” – Both lazy ways to avoid expressing yourself elegantly
• “I am gonna go ahead and…” and other figures of speech that add nothing to the sentence.

3) Skip words. People who are nervous or afraid not to get heard tend to use these words a lot. Often, they will also speak very fast. The words serve as place holders for a longer, more elaborate description of the subject being debated. Examples:

• “etc etc etc”
• “or whatever”
• “And stuff”
• “And so and an so forth”

These words speed up communication with close friends and other people who share a large part of your context. But when addressing strangers – you cannot expect them to understand what your skip words are hiding. You risk confusing the listener or sounder eager to be heard.

The Solution: Some people are eloquent when they speak – naturally it seems. Their words are like soldiers marching nicely on parade out of their mouths. Somehow, their speech is more captivating, more suave.

How do they do it?

First of all, they speak slowly, pronouncing every syllable in every word. This gives their brain time to enough to plan the sentence – which will make more brain farts go away. Try recording your own voice and notice how many farts you do… Now, try slowing down your speech to a crawl. Speak SLOOOWLY, carefully pronouncing every single syllable. Practice this way of speaking, overdo it in the beginning until your have eliminated brain farts. If you worry that speaking slow will waste time, think about how much time you can waste by net being listened too in the first place.

Secondly, get rid of fill words. Many people feel that they become more “black/white” in their statements when they remove fill words. They feel uncomfortable with their speech becoming sharper and less ambiguous. Speaking without fill words does mean you will have to hedge your statements more eloquently – but this is a good thing. As you sharpen you speech – you will sharpen your thinking. Remember: Action is thinking.

Take this example (almost literally adopted from a real world conversation I recently had):

“I kind of think that John is like, very much kind of sort of totally into Amy, you know what I mean?”

What is REALLY being said here?  Try this for a change:

“I think John may be falling in love with Amy”

You have hedged your statement (with the “may”) and expressed your opinion clearly and without seeking approval. If you wanted the other persons opinion too, you would add: “What do you think?”.

Thirdly, eloquent people will err on the side of over elaboration. Rather state your point with sufficient context, than risk being misunderstood. Admittedly, this is a delicate balance. No one likes being treated like a child and having a simple point explained in too much detail. If in doubt, just ask:

“I am sorry, am I over elaborating this point? Please ask me to skip ahead if I am – I intend no disrespect”