Fillers – Don’t use them

We tend to use ‘filler’ words in our way of speech when we grope in our minds for a right word or when we run out of ideas or we generally don’t know what to say. Fillers are dis-fluencies that make our language less intelligent. Some examples of typical filler words are -

Basically, I am from Chennai.
The word basically is a filler in the current context. Displace basically and replace it with ‘Originally’, if you have to use it.

If you ask me my opinion, I mean, I have to tell you, I mean, I do not believe in life after death.

I hope you understood why in the above context ‘ I mean ‘ qualifies as a filler.

I hope you know, you know, that tomorrow is a holiday, you know, because of Diwali, you know.

( Alright, I probably over did the ‘ you know‘, you know, but now you know! )

Like, when you are tempted to, like, use a filler next time, remember, like, its not so cool to do that!

Question Tags

Like I mentioned earlier, the English we speak is largely influenced by our regional language thought process. Typically, we would use a ‘No’ as a question tag, at the end of our sentences when we speak in our first language.

For example -
“I told you about him, No?”
” We met that day, No?”

The question format in English should be -
” Didn’t I tell you about him”
” Didn’t we meet that day?”

Or if using a question tag makes you feel ‘good’ then replace the tag with a ‘right‘ or ‘didn’t I/ we ‘ instead of ‘No’.

For example -

I told you about him, didn’t I?
We met that day, didn’t we?

But almost never over do question tags.