Language and persuasion are both skills that can be learned. They both fall under the heading of ‘art’ — both creative and inspirational, which can also be mangled and misused turning them to your disadvantage. There are prodigies in all facets of life– Mozart was a musical prodigy, H.P. Lovecraft, a poetic genius, Pablo Picasso, an artistic prodigy. However, most of us need to practice whichever art we are drawn to in order to become masterful.

Becoming a world class persuader requires us to use language powerfully and intentionally. We are served well, especially with our affluent clientle, to clean up and polish our language.

It’s likely that the more you read, the bigger your vocabulary (unless you’re only reading, say, People Magazine or one very precise genre with limited language specific to that type). One of the most valuable things you can do to increase your vocabulary, is read.

Even with a huge vocabulary, you might not be blessed with the gift of oratory skills. There’s first the fear of public speaking to overcome (if you’re one of the majority of people who have this fear). And once you overcome this fear, then there’s the issue of having something of value or interest to say.

Okay, now you’ve got your vocabulary, you’ve overcome the fear of public speaking, you have something interesting and valuable to impart to your audience. . . now you have to deal with the delivery.

My transcriptionist tells me I say ‘In other words’ a lot. I believe I do this for two reasons. One is that I’m always trying to deliver information in as many ways as I can so that I am able to gain the understanding of as many people as possible. The second reason. . .I don’t use the word ‘um’ and I think ‘in other words’ is taking the place of ‘um’ in my language patterns.

There’s a great new book out called “Um. . . Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean” by Michael Erard. One of the most interesting things I’ve read so far in ‘Um. . .’ is that this is a universal. All languages have their own version of ‘um’ (in Spain it’s ‘eh’, in France ‘euh’) and the use of this filler has been around since at least as far back as the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks.

It’s only been in since the twentieth century that ‘um. . .’ has become unpopular with academics and teachers, most likely coinciding with television and radio.

The beginning of ‘Um. . .’ (the book) describes the transcriptionists of the Federal News Service. These transcriptionists do the closed captions that scroll across you TV screen. The FNS has style guidelines that their workers must follow, for example, ‘umms’, ‘ahs’, ‘uhs’ and ‘ers’, are all left out. If the speaker has a false start of one or two words, that’s left out as are partial words. There is one exception to this rule: everything a policymaker says is typed out verbatim, ums, ers, uhs, partial words and fragments included.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I couldn’t stop myself from skipping to the chapter on George W. Bush. It’s not as funny as the book ‘Bushisms’ but it is an interesting perspective. People view him, as a result of what the author calls ‘disfluencies’, either as ‘down home’, ‘one of the common people’, with his gaffes making him appear more accessible, others consider his blunders a lack of intelligence and a dangerous indication that he is not connected to reality. Regardless of which side of the argument you fall, some of the more memorable disfluencies are pretty funny.

My suggestion this week: pay attention to the way you talk. See how many ums, uhs, false starts, stumbles, gaffes and blunders you make verbally. And pay attention to the way other people talk. Is there a secretary in your office who uses ‘like’ every other word, or an associate who constantly stumbles? How do you perceive them?