How do I stop saying um and like on camera?
Filler words are a thinking noise, not a flaw, and they shrink with two moves: a change in how you talk, and a change in how you cut. Here is the full method, plus how to actually count the ones you have left.
By Thomas, founder of CutScore · Updated June 2026
First, the kind thing: filler words are not a sign you are bad at this. An um is the sound your brain makes while it picks the next word. You do it in normal conversation all day and nobody flinches, because they are doing it too. The camera is the problem. It adds a small, dumb pressure that speeds your mouth up while your plan stays the same speed, and the gap between the two fills with noise.
I have shipped videos where I counted my own ums afterward and physically winced. The pattern was always the same. The takes where I improvised every sentence were a swamp of "um, so, like, basically." The takes where I knew my first line cold were clean. The fillers were never about confidence in some deep sense. They were about whether I had decided what to say before I opened my mouth.
So the real enemy is not the word um. It is improvising live while a red light watches you. Kill the improvising and most of the fillers leave with it. The rest you remove in the edit. That two-part split is the whole method, and the next sections are just the details.
Fix it while you talk, then fix it in the edit.
Two columns, two jobs. The left side is everything you change before the camera rolls. The right side is what you do with the ums that survive. You need both.
| Move | When | Why it kills fillers |
|---|---|---|
| Plan the first line | before you talk | Most ums cluster in the opening, when your plan is the thinnest. |
| Slow your pace | before you talk | A slower mouth gives your brain time, so it stops reaching for a placeholder. |
| Pause, do not fill | while you talk | A silent beat reads as confident; an um reads as unsure. Swap one for the other. |
| Talk in shorter sentences | while you talk | Long, winding sentences run out of plan halfway, and that gap fills with "like." |
| Do a second take | while you talk | The second pass of any line is almost always cleaner than the first. |
| Cut the leftovers | in the edit | A jump cut removes an um in one keystroke, no reshoot required. |
| Tighten the dead air | in the edit | Long silences before a point read like the um you just deleted. Trim them too. |
| Count what is left | in the edit | Aim for under about two filler words a minute, then stop fiddling. |
Tallying fillers by hand across a ten-minute video is miserable and you will lose count. CutScore counts them for you, marks each one with a timestamp, and tells you your rate per minute.
Four habits that stop the ums at the source.
1. Pause instead of filling the gap
This is the single most useful thing on the page, so I will be blunt. An um is what you say because silence feels unbearable. It is not. A silent beat reads as someone who is in control and lets the point land. The trick is that a pause feels enormous to you and tiny to everyone else: the half-second you are terrified of is about half as long as it feels from the inside. Practice stopping your mouth completely when you lose the thread. Just stop. The next word arrives, the camera does not mind, and you have replaced an um with the most professional sound there is, which is nothing.
2. Slow down and plan the opening
Fillers spike when your mouth outruns your plan, so do two things. Slow your speaking pace a notch, which buys your brain the half-second it was trying to fill with "um." And rehearse your first two sentences until you can say them in your sleep. The opening is where ums are densest and where viewers decide whether to stay, so a clean start is worth more than a clean middle. You do not need a script for the whole thing. You need to know exactly how you begin.
3. Speak in shorter sentences
Long, winding sentences are filler factories. You commit to a thought, run out of plan halfway through, and the gap fills with "like" and "you know" while you scramble to finish. Short sentences give you frequent, natural stopping points. Each full stop is a clean place to breathe and decide what comes next, instead of trailing off into a placeholder. As a bonus, short sentences are easier for the viewer to follow, which helps you keep people watching. Say one idea. Stop. Say the next one.
4. Just do a second take
The cheapest fix in the building. The first time you say any line, you are half writing it; the second time, you already know where it lands, so it comes out cleaner with fewer ums. When a take goes sideways, do not push through and "fix it in the edit." Stop, reset, and say it again. Two clean takes give you options. One messy take gives you a problem. This is not perfectionism. It is the difference between editing and excavating.
Here is a real CutScore coaching report for an everyday talking-head video: filler rate, pace, the hook and more, scored, with timestamps and the exact fixes.
Cut the ums that made it through.
No matter how clean your delivery gets, some fillers survive. The good news is the edit can erase them faster than you can say them. Three moves, in order.
What counts as too many filler words?
There is no official standard for this, so here is a working line I use. Around two filler words per minute is invisible. At that rate the ums hide behind your meaning and the speech sounds natural and human. Climb toward eight or ten a minute and the balance flips: viewers start hearing the fillers instead of your point, and the video reads as nervous even when you are not.
The goal is not zero. Zero sounds like a robot reading a teleprompter, and audiences trust a real person more than a flawless one. What you are after is few enough that nobody is counting. If you have ever rewatched your own footage and physically cringed at the third "um, so, basically" in one breath, you already know which side of the line you are on. The fix is the method above, and the measurement is the easy part.
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