How do you stop saying um when you dictate?

To stop saying um when you dictate, decide the next phrase before you start speaking it. A filler such as "um" often appears when you are still choosing the words, so the fix is to plan the sentence during the pause before it, then say it as one phrase. If a filler still slips out, a dictation tool with a filler-removal feature can take it out of the text, and the evidence suggests that removing fillers from a transcript does not usually change its meaning.

The reason is simple. Speech is produced in real time, and a filler buys a moment of thinking time. When you dictate, that moment is recorded, and the software writes it down. Typing hides the pause, because you can stop, delete and retype. Dictation makes the pause visible, so the habit that matters is planning before you speak, not fighting the filler once it starts.

Plan the next phrase during the pause before it

A filler often comes from planning in the wrong place. If you start a phrase and then search for its end, the search can show up as "um" or "uh". The remedy is to do the search during the pause before the phrase.

Research on writing letters found that about two-thirds of composing time goes to planning, whether the letter is written, dictated or spoken ¹. Planning is not a waste. It has to happen somewhere, and dictation makes it audible. Moving it to the pause before each phrase keeps the spoken part clean.

A practical routine:

1. Pause. Decide the point of the next phrase in a few words.
2. Take a breath, and say the phrase in one go.
3. Pause again, and plan the following phrase.

The pause should feel deliberate, not like a hesitation you must hide. Pause between thoughts, and keep the words of one thought together.

Pauses help at the boundaries, not inside a phrase

A pause at the right place does two things. It gives the recognizer a clean boundary, and it gives you a moment to check what you have covered. Nuance's guidance for Dragon says to pause briefly before and after dictating punctuation ². Treat your planning pauses the same way: at a boundary they help, and inside a phrase they break the thought.

Pauses also help you catch errors. In an online study, adding a pause between words improved how well people identified speech recognition errors by ear ³. That was a listening task, so it does not prove the same effect while you read on screen. Still, it is a reason to build pauses into the rhythm rather than to speak without stopping.

Use a filler-removal feature if your tool has one

Some dictation tools remove fillers for you. Microsoft says that Fluid dictation, a Voice Access feature on Copilot+ PCs, "automatically corrects grammar, punctuation, and filler words as you speak, reducing the need for manual editing" ⁴. The same page says the feature is powered by on-device small language models ⁵.

The feature is limited. Microsoft's page describes it for Copilot+ PCs, and it may not be on your computer. Check the setting in your own tool before you rely on it, and read the output, because a feature that removes fillers can also change phrasing you wanted to keep.

Removing fillers from text is a fair edit in most cases. Lease and Johnson's 2006 paper reports that readability studies found fillers and speech repairs "may be deleted from transcripts without compromising meaning" ⁶. That work concerns conversational transcripts and machine parsing, not dictated drafts. A filler in a draft is mostly a pause rather than a meaningful word, so removing it is generally safe. A word you repeat for emphasis, such as "very, very" or "not, not", is different, and the read-back is where you decide.

Check the draft for other spoken habits

Fillers are one of several habits that show up in dictated text. Three others matter more for accuracy:

• False starts. You start a sentence, stop, and begin again. The abandoned start stays in the text unless you remove it. Read the paragraph back and delete it.
• Repeated words. Saying "the the" or "and and" often comes from the same mid-phrase search. Remove the repeat on the read-through.
• Trailing phrases. Words such as "you know" or "like" slip in at the end of a clause. They are fillers too, and the same fix applies.

Use the read-back in the how to dictate guide to catch these together. Fillers that survive the read-back rarely change the meaning, but they make the text harder to read.

When to leave fillers in

Not every filler is a mistake to remove. In a quote from a recording, an interview, or a transcript where the words of the speaker must be kept, leave the fillers in and mark the edit honestly. In a personal note or a draft you will revise, remove them. The rule is to remove fillers in your own writing and to keep them in a record of what someone said.

If fillers appear in every session, consider whether the problem is composing. Dictating from notes you have already written is an easier starting point than composing aloud, and it may reduce fillers. For the practical steps on notes and letters, see how to dictate notes quickly and how to dictate a letter. For the question of when to fix a mistake, read should you edit while you dictate or afterward.

Practice the habit for a week

Dictate one routine text every day for a week, such as a short message or a list of tasks. Plan each phrase during the pause, and count the fillers you hear on a playback. Compare the count on the first day with the count on the last. Habits like this are covered in how to get used to dictation.

For the definition of the term, see the glossary entry for filler words. The guide to dictation punctuation explains how spoken marks differ from fillers, and the dictation mistakes guide covers recognition errors that are different from speech habits.