What those ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ really tell us about candidates for the White House. Nine. That is the number of “uhs” that former President Barack Obama uttered in a period of two minutes during a 2012 presidential debate. Other Obama “uh” counters, such as University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman, clocked him as using “uhs” and “ums”—hesitation markers known as “filled pauses” in linguistspeak—roughly every 19 words during one interview.Read Full Story