Interesting article and interesting comments here. My personal experience is that by working to remove the um, and ahs in my presentations I did get more attent

Interesting article and interesting comments here. My personal experience is that by working to remove the um, and ahs in my presentations I did get more attentive audiences. For me it was a combination of rehearsing what I was going to say a bit more (so the conversation had already spooled out a couple of times from my brain) and being ok with letting the last thing I said just hang out there. Of course there are good times and bad times for that, I've heard speakers use cliff hanger statements to engage their audiences. In general two-way conversation I'm not so sure. Does it make them better? Does it break them up? That is something that is less certain for me.