Vocal tics – also known as vocal fillers, sometimes vias – are unnecessary sounds or words that you should consider eliminating from your speaking voice, either your every-day voice or your presenting voice.
Adding tics to your every-day voice is something all of us have acquired over time, because of our culture or heritage, society in general, or – my sincere apologies for the insult – sheer laziness.
Vocal fillers are also extremely common in our presentation voice.
They’re typically caused by two things:
- A lack of clarity on what you want to say, or
- Nervousness
Oftentimes one feeds the other so that your vocal fillers become more pronounced (except the pun).
While there’s not much research studying audience’s reaction to vocal tics, the one empirical take-away of my own is that too many vocal tics are really distracting.
To help eliminate vocal tics, let’s do two things.
1. Review the two basic types and how they are used
2. Outline five easy-ish steps to get rid of them
Two Types
Without going into the details of speech pathology, vocal fillers fall into two loose groups: syllables and words.
Tics can be syllables tend to be guttural noises, like um, ah, uhh and err. When I was in my late teens are saw a speech therapist for my stuttering, she called tics as syllables sloppy words. Or more damning, they aren’t words.
Tics can be single-word fillers, such as like, totally and right, or short phrases such as you know and Am I right?
These are obviously English examples, but every language and cultural has its own vocal fillers.
Lots of Australians frequent begin – and sometimes end – every sentence with the word mate.
A Swedish cousin ends every sentence with ja? just as a client in Singapore ends every sentence with lah. (In either case, the filler is one-word emotional response, either used as an affirmtion (yes?), exasperation (what?) or dismissal (no!)
Three Places They’re Used
Second, isolate where you use them in a sentence. There’s three obvious places: at the start, beginning or end of a sentence.
- Amanda uses a filler at the beginning of the sentence, as a ramp-up into the sentence itself. An example: “Ahh – so today I’d like to talk about …”
If this describes you, make a deliberate effort to start every sentence with a specific word, not a sound.
- Bobby uses a filler to connect sentences together, combining a guttural sound with the word and. An example: “We sold 15% of our stock last quarter … err … and our other stores had comparative sales figures.”
If this describes you, make a deliberate effort to end a sentence – and start the next sentence – with a specific word. Speak each sentence as its own message or thought.
Also, I coach people to avoid compound sentences if they can. An alternative to Bobby’s example would be “We sold 15% of our stock last quarter. Our other stores had comparative sales figures.”
- Cindy uses a filler at the end of the sentence. An example: “Thanks for listening, ummm.” Placing a tic at the end of a sentence is almost always a cultural tic, as noted above. Because they’re cultural, people tell me they’re less noticeable. Perhaps true if your audience comprises only one ethic group. But those days are dwindling. So, as before, the focus should be to end the sentence with a specific word, not a sound or a word.
Addressing and Eliminating Vocal Tips
Here are five tipcs to address and eliminate vocal tics. Like most habits, it takes continual awareness and practice to get rid of them.
1. Identify – admit? – that you have a problem.
My Grandma once caught me lying to her, and she said, “Do you hear yourself talking?” She’d likely ask you the same question about your vocal filler.
People often don’t know they use fillers in their conversation because few of us listen intently to what actually comes out of our mouth. Other people know they use fillers and they don’t care. ‘Leona’ recently attended my presentation skills workshop and, even before we filmed her, said she wasn’t fussed if she had sloppy words. In fact, she welcomed it. “It’s my signature,” she said.
Fair enough. But is it a positive or a negative signature? We’ve all heard at least one presenter who relentlessly overuses a phrase. It’s more than just annoying: the repeated phrase becomes what we focus on, so instead of remembering what the presenters says, we remember the irritation.
In the end, decide if a repetitious word or phrase is an asset. It rarely is. No surprise, Leona had a completely different point-of-view when her co-workers in the workshop said it was ANNOYING AF!
2. Recognise how you use fillers.
Filler is an apt description. Psychological research suggests people use these tics because there’s an underlying need by the presenter to fill up the air. They want to keep talking, either because they want to keep the floor, prevent other people from talking, or stop people from asking questions.
Some fillers are called hesitations, because their brain isn’t 100% clear on what they want to say. Therefore, the hesitation drops into their voice while their brain can’t decide what words to use. In either case, Michael Larcombe – writing in The New Scientist (1995) – explained it using this clever metaphor.
“In order to keep the floor while we hesitate, we place dummy words in the empty spaces between our words, much as we might drape our coats on a seat at the cinema to prevent others from taking it.”
Use the three examples above to isolate where you may be using your own tics. At the same, it often helps to do the next steps (even though it rarely feels like it).
3. Record your voice.
I can hear y’all groan from afar. However, recording your speaking voice is an effective way to address the problem of tics, primarily because the problem (if there is one) is now 100% real.
Some people take it a step further and film themselves on camera, not just capture the voice. That’s fine, but focus on one aspect at a time. It’s easy to get side-tracked with all aspects of non-verbal communications and the vocal tic gets lost.
If you are filmed, the best thing to do is to turn away or block the screen so you focus on your voice. Most people – well over half, I’d say (including me) – use one dominant filler in their talking voice, not several. Isolate it. Think about where you use it. At the beginning, middle or end of the sentence? Now you can focus on removing it.
4. Use the power of colleagues and friends.
Many people absolutely cannot stand listening to themselves. If so, your final option is to ask people around you to be brutally and constructively honest.
They could give you a ‘signal’ every time you use the offending filler. Depending upon the situation and your preference, signals might be subtle or audible.
- Subtle signals might be a person who scratches their ear lobe (very discreet in meetings), or audience members who slightly raises a finger, a hand or a pencil as an alert.
- Audible signals might be a person saying the offending word when the speaker does. These are unobtrusive signals.
- Disruptive signals have lots of fans. I’ve heard of people clinking their drinking glasses or rapping the table-top with their knuckles.
A friend in the UK likes to make it fun by asking audience members to throw harmless paper balls at the speaker to get them to stop saying vocal tics. I tried it once, but it got too silly for my taste. I think it works well to demonstrate to the speaker how often they use a filler. I’m not sure it helps to actually get rid of the tic.
5. Be nice to yourself.
At the end of the day, eliminationg vocal tics is akin to quit chewing your finger nails or any other habit. On one hand, you want to eliminate them because they essentially make you sound less than articulate. On the other, a few vocal tics here and there aren’t going to do extraordinary damage.
Again, find one method that works for you. In my experience, self-censure tips are difficult to enforce if you don’t have 100% discipline. Having a second set of friendly and constructive ears to keep the attention high is often more helpful, and in the end, more effective.
How have you tried to eliminate vocal tics, sloppy words, odd noises and the like? They’re so common! And, often hard to beat. Please add your thoughts or comments below.
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