Charles Harrington Elster

May 14, 2013 7:40 AM EDT

As I read your blog, I have perceived something great about you,is that you never use filler as you say or write, With all due respect, Do you speak without fillers too ?, Will I be sued ?, If I use fillers like "Y'know", "Umm", "hmm", "ahh...", "Well", "but", "Alright", sometimes "somthing" as professional speaker?

- Mr. Invincible

May 14, 2013 8:41 AM EDT

Good observation. Careful, effective writing has no filler, circumlocutions, pleonasms, or obfuscation. It can be complex, even ornate, but it must be clean and clear. And the message I keep trying to get across is that you should NEVER speak as you write because speaking is full of mental blips, bumps, and burps. Of course in my own casual speech I suffer from this malady too, but perhaps less so than others because I've done a lot of radio and voice-overs so I'm careful about my speech too. So if you speak professionally or formally in any way (toasts, after-dinner stuff, etc.), you should strive to clear the clutter (e.g., "well," "okay"), particularly at transitions, and speak slowly enough to be clear and to avoid continually saying "uh" and "um." Audiences will hold these defects against you.

- Charles Elster

July 06, 2013 1:14 PM EDT

Sharpening the point a little further, in most of the these newly-minted names, there seems to be an aversion to ending them with a vowel, as most Latino names are concluded.

- Dan Martins