Fillers and pacing under stress: count the fillers, pause at the edges, slow down where it matters

An occasional um is normal; dense fillers and rushing hide your structure.

Before you read: predict

ExamHall mock round. You recorded your 90-second answer on the exam-start stampede, and a friend marked the transcript: “you know” and “basically” 14 times in 190 words, and “um” twice, each just before a figure you took a few seconds to recall. You will cut the “you know”s and “basically”s.

What do you do with the two ums?

The 30-second version

Count your fillers per 100 words of a transcript of yourself, and cut the ones that carry nothing. Where a filler was, stop briefly at the end of the idea. Measure each part's pace, and say the headline and the figures slower than the rest.

An occasional um is normal; dense fillers and rushing hide your structure.

How it works

Step 1 of 10

Uh and um are words. They announce a coming delay. Speakers plan them like any word. [S1]

Analogy: The indoor-cycling instructor's cues

An indoor-cycling instructor talks a class of thirty through a ride over loud music. Each cue is one short sentence, “Resistance up to seven.”, and then she stops talking while the class turns the knob. She gives each block's goal first, and slowly: “This one's a hill: three minutes, seated.” She says the numbers slowest of all, because riders act on them. When the playlist skips, she says “er…” before the next cue, and nobody minds. What would lose the class is “like, basically, so” between cues: riders can't tell which words are the instruction.

On the bike	In the interview
One cue, then she stops talking	One idea per sentence, a pause at its end
The block's goal, first and slowly	The headline, slower than the rest
“Seven”, “three minutes”, said slowest	The figures, slower than the rest
An “er” when the playlist skips	An occasional um before a hard point

Breaks down when: riders don't ask questions, and her cues are rehearsed to the playlist; an interviewer asks follow-ups, and you speak unscripted. Wrong inference: "every stop should last the same time." A stop marks an edge; its length can vary.

In real terms: record yourself, count the fillers per 100 words, and check the pace of the headline and the figures against the rest.

Examples, run for real

EXH-4540 is a synthetic recording on the row's hook: the candidate's 90-second answer to “Why does the exam start overload Postgres?”, with the author's timings for each part. MR !4840 is her re-recorded take after counting the first. “The rest” is every part except the headline and the figures.

EXH-4540 “Why does the exam start overload Postgres?” · synthetic recordings, the author's timings
EXH-4540 take 1 · 137 words in 1:03 · fillers 16 (basically 4, like 5, you know 3, yaani 2, um 2) · 11.7 per 100 words · longest sentence 57 words
  headline said: “So, basically, it’s, like, a cache stampede at 09:00, you know, the paper key expires right at the start.”
  headline  0:00–0:06 · 19 words · 190 a minute
  mechanism 0:06–0:34 · 57 words · 122 a minute
  figures   0:34–0:41 · 19 words · 163 a minute
  fix       0:41–1:03 · 42 words · 115 a minute
  headline and figures slower than the rest (119 a minute): no
MR !4840 take 2 · 89 words in 0:41 · fillers 1 (um 1) · 1.1 per 100 words · longest sentence 15 words
  headline said: “The exam start overloads Postgres because the paper’s cache key expires at 09:00.”
  headline  0:00–0:07 · 13 words · 111 a minute
  mechanism 0:07–0:21 · 33 words · 141 a minute
  figures   0:21–0:30 · 17 words · 113 a minute
  fix       0:30–0:41 · 26 words · 142 a minute
  headline and figures slower than the rest (142 a minute): yes

Take 1 knows the mechanism, but its headline is its fastest part, wrapped in three fillers, and one sentence runs to 57 words. Take 2 keeps one um, before the fix: the rate is not zero, and it need not be (step 1). It says less in fewer seconds, yet the listener gets more: each idea ends where a sentence ends, and the two things to remember come slowest.

Try it

Answer first, then check. Nothing is saved.

Question 1 of 7

Payments-ledger round. Your transcript of one answer reads: “So, like, a refund is a new entry, you know, not an edit. Basically, we never change the old row. Yaani, the refund looks like the payment with its sign flipped, and, um, it points back to the payment by its ID.” Count the fillers (um, uh, basically, you know, yaani, and like used as a pause) per 100 words of the whole transcript.

What is its filler rate, to one decimal place?

Question 2 of 7

Payments-ledger round. Your answer to “Why is the ledger append-only?” has three parts, with the recorder's timings: the headline, 12 words from 0:00 to 0:06; the details, 80 words from 0:06 to 0:36; the figures, 18 words from 0:36 to 0:42.

Measured in words a minute, which part did you say faster than the details?

Question 3 of 7

Payments-ledger round, with an interviewer who speaks no Arabic. Your transcript has “yaani” six times: four where you paused a moment to find a word, and two where you stopped for several seconds to recall a settlement figure.

What do you do with them?

Question 4 of 7

Payments-ledger round. In your next take of the settlement answer, the figures' part is 30 words long. Your details run at 160 words a minute, and you want the figures at three quarters of that pace.

To the nearest second, how long should the figures' part take?

Question 5 of 7

Your transcript of the settlement answer opens: “So, basically, the nightly settlement, like, matches every card payment to, you know, a line in the bank's file, and, yaani, about 1,800 payments a night don't match on the first pass and, like, they go to a retry queue at 03:00 and basically most clear by the morning.” Write the next take's opening, as you would say it, on a line starting Take:, then one line starting Why: telling a friend what you changed and why.

Answer in one or two lines.

Your answer (optional, stays on this page)

Question 6 of 7

Payments-ledger round, a week later. You recorded your chargeback answer twice. Monday's take: 300 words, 18 fillers, 12 sentences. Thursday's take: 160 words, 12 fillers, 8 sentences.

Which take is denser in fillers?

Question 7 of 7

Payments-ledger round, a week later. Before a third take of your chargeback answer, you write down one goal for how it should sound.

Which goal do you write?

Go deeper

Pro tip

Record a two-minute answer on your phone each evening, transcribe the first minute, and circle every filler. The circles show you which filler is yours, and it is usually one or two words. Then practise the sentence where it clusters, aloud, stopping at the full stop instead.

Checked against the tools and docs as of 2026-10-15.

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