Thanks for the comment.

A few ahs and ums are not going to ruin many presentations. That being said, it is still worthwhile to strive for perfection. If my friend always strives to hit the X ring (bullseye) and misses he will likely hit the 10 ring. That’s still a great shot and he is still in the game. The minute he starts accepting just hitting the 10 ring then a miss is in the 9 and he starts losing.

Professional speakers and trainers are guilty of this as well. In fact, there are many professional speakers and public speaking gurus who just aren’t that good at speaking. Ditto trainers.

Whether or not anyone agrees with what I am saying here is up to them. They must decide for themselves how good they want to be. I am just saying that ahs and ums should not be accepted regardless of the number because they are probably being caused by a more pressing problem: lack of effective pausing, a poorly thought out train of thought or lack of eye contact.

That being said, one or two ahs or ums isn’t going to cause a lot of trouble. Accepting them, on the other hand, probably will.

I think there’s also a difference between somebody who presents just every so often as part of their job, and a professional speaker (or trainer). I think if you just present occasionally you don’t need to eliminate every um or ah (though I agree that if it is distracting to more than a few people in your audience then you do need to do something about it). However, if you’re a professional speaker of some kind, just like being a world class rifle shooter, you should be working on continuously improving every part of your speech – including eradicating ums and ahs! Olivia