What counts as a filler word?

A filler word is any sound, word, or short phrase that carries no meaning in the sentence and exists only to occupy time while you think. Take it out and the sentence says exactly the same thing. "Um" and "uh" are the obvious ones, but most people use far more fillers than they realise, because many of them are real words doing nothing.

The counter above looks for the following, in pasted transcripts and in recordings you make with the microphone. Some are only fillers in certain positions: "like" is fine in "I like this plan" and a filler in "it was, like, a big project". The tool counts every occurrence, so read the highlighted transcript to see which ones are actually hurting you.

• um, uh, er, ah: pure sounds with no dictionary meaning. These are the ones listeners notice first.
• like: the most common filler among younger speakers, usually dropped in before a number, a quote, or an adjective.
• you know: an appeal for agreement that invites the listener to fill in what you have not said.
• so: harmless as a connector, a filler when it opens every sentence or trails off at the end ("...so, yeah").
• basically, actually, literally: intensifiers that promise precision and rarely deliver any.
• right, okay: tag words tacked on to check the listener is still with you.
• I mean: a verbal reset that signals you are about to restate something.
• kind of, sort of: hedges that soften a claim you could simply make.
• just, really, well: small softeners and openers that add nothing when repeated.

Why we say them

Filler words are not a sign of a weak vocabulary or a lazy speaker. They come from two ordinary things the brain is doing at once: finding the next words and keeping the floor.

The first is cognitive load. Speech is produced roughly a phrase ahead of what you are saying. When the next phrase is not ready, because the idea is complex, the question was unexpected, or you are nervous, the mouth keeps going anyway and produces a placeholder. That is why fillers cluster at the start of answers and right before the hard part of a sentence, not in the middle of something you have said a hundred times.

The second is turn-holding. In conversation, silence is a signal that you have finished and someone else may speak. "Um" says "I am not done, do not interrupt me". It works, which is exactly why it becomes a habit. In an interview or a presentation nobody is going to take the turn from you, so the signal is unnecessary, but the reflex fires anyway.

Nerves make both worse. Under stress, working memory shrinks and the urge to avoid silence grows, so the fillers multiply. This is also why your filler count in a relaxed chat with a friend tells you very little about how you will sound in front of a hiring panel.

How many filler words is normal?

There is no single correct number, and anyone who gives you an exact threshold is guessing. What matters is the rate: fillers divided by total words. The counter reports this as a percentage and turns it into a cleanliness score.

As a rough guide, unrehearsed everyday conversation often runs at one filler every fifteen to twenty words, which is somewhere around five to seven percent. Listeners barely register that in casual settings. In a formal setting, the same rate starts to read as unprepared. Speakers who are considered polished tend to sit at roughly one to two percent, and the best keep it lower still without sounding robotic.

Rate is not the whole story. Three "ums" in a row, or a filler before every number you quote, is more damaging than the same count spread evenly. And a single filler type that repeats, like "basically" at the start of every sentence, becomes a verbal tic the listener starts counting instead of listening.

How to reduce filler words

You cannot remove fillers by deciding to stop. The reflex is faster than the decision. What works is replacing the reflex with a different one and practising it until the new habit is the default.

Fillers in interviews, presentations, and meetings

The same filler lands differently depending on the room. Knowing where you are tells you how hard to work on it.

• Job interviews: the listener is actively judging you, and they are deciding on communication skills as much as on content. Fillers in the first answer and in the answer to "tell me about yourself" do the most damage because they set the impression. A filler before a number ("we grew, um, about thirty percent") also undercuts the number itself.
• Presentations and talks: you are holding the floor by default, so turn-holding fillers are pure noise. The audience has nothing to do but listen, which means every "um" is heard by everyone. On the other hand, a planned pause after a key point is one of the most powerful tools a speaker has, so this is the setting where swapping fillers for silence pays off most.
• Meetings and calls: a moderate filler rate is normal and mostly forgiven, but repeated hedges ("kind of", "sort of", "I guess") make a recommendation sound tentative. If you want a decision, strip the hedges from the sentence that asks for it.
• Sales and discovery calls: fillers while the prospect is talking are fine. Fillers in your pitch, your pricing explanation, and your answer to an objection are not, because those are the moments the prospect is measuring your confidence.

A before and after example

Here is a typical answer to "tell me about a project you are proud of", as a nervous candidate might say it, followed by the same content with the fillers taken out and the pauses put back in.

Practise out loud, not on paper

Pasting a transcript into the counter tells you where you stand. It does not change the reflex, because the reflex lives in speaking, not in writing. The only thing that reduces fillers is repeated spoken practice with feedback close enough to the moment that you can connect the filler to what you were thinking when it slipped out.

A workable routine: pick one question you expect to be asked, answer it out loud and record it, run the recording through the counter, note your dominant filler and where it clustered, then answer the same question again with a deliberate pause in that spot. Three or four rounds on one question usually produce a visible drop. Then move to the next question.

If you want that loop without the manual steps, Pavone runs mock interviews and sales roleplays with a live AI counterpart and flags filler words, pace, and clarity on every answer, so each attempt comes with the numbers already attached.