PricingThe kinds of filler
Fillers fall into a few groups. The first is almost always safe to cut; the rest depend on the sentence.
| Type | Examples | Usually cut? |
|---|---|---|
| Hesitations | um, uh, er, hmm | Yes |
| Verbal tics | like, you know, basically, I mean, so, right | Only where they carry no meaning |
| Stutters and repeats | “the, the”, “to, to” | Yes, keeping the last complete one |
| False starts | “if you’re multi- uh, if you’re doing…” | Yes, keeping the finished sentence |
| Long pauses | silence while thinking | Shorten them, but keep a breath between thoughts |
When a filler isn’t a filler
“Like” can be a tic or a comparison. In a Revolut talk we tested, “businesses like Stripe and Adyen” means “such as,” so it stays; in an NVIDIA conference talk, every one of 12 “like”s was a tic. “You know” can be a habit or a real question to the audience, and a repeated word can be emphasis. That is why a keyword list isn’t enough: each candidate has to be read in its sentence.
How often speakers use them
Rates vary a lot from speaker to speaker. In four public talks we measured, hesitations ranged from one in two minutes to 16 in one minute.
| Recording | Length | Ums and uhs | All filler words cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prime Intellect, NVIDIA event | 1:00 | 16 | 38 |
| Nik Storonsky, Revolut | 2:00 | 13 | 40 |
| Arjun Karanam, Trajectory | 2:00 | 8 | 22 |
| Elon Musk, Tesla Roadster event | 2:00 | 1 | 7 |
Sources: Shorty News: four talks before and after. Measured by Shorty on excerpts of public YouTube talks, 20 October 2026.
Should you remove all of them?
Not always. Hesitations and stutters slow a short video down, so cutting them almost always helps. Tics are part of how people talk, and removing every one can make a casual speaker sound scripted. Decide by format: tighten hard for ads and short-form clips, lightly for interviews and podcasts.
How to say fewer of them
- Know your first and last sentence before you press record.
- Pause instead of saying “um.” A silent beat is easy to keep or cut.
- Record in short sections rather than one long take.
- Watch one recording back and count your most common tic. Noticing it is most of the fix.
Removing them automatically
To remove fillers from a recording, use an editor that keeps them in its transcript and judges them in context. In Shorty, write “remove the ums” in your brief and the director cuts them while it makes the edit, with captions timed to the clean take.