Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finished the book, "Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean" by Michael Erard on October 29th, 2018. I had started it on June 17th, only a few months earlier. I thought the material covering historical texts was a drag to read through. I was expecting a deeper linguistic analysis but this wasn't the right book to read. I also do not believe that "um" is a speech error. It is a channel feedback mechanism designed to tell the listeners to wait patiently. The book did cover sign languages and I commend the author for doing this. I had read the part in the book where one presenter on verbal blunders "psychically" caused the speakers after her to blunder more than usual. I experienced a similar "psychic" effect today. I finished the book during a lull at a work meeting while I waited for a lady technician at her request to do something on her computer. I was surprised to find that I only had a few pages left to read before it went into the appendices. Later, another technician who was installing a printer for me noted that I had typed "The lazy dog jumped over the quick brown fox" and told me that I had it backwards. It was a slip of the hands! I tried to fix it and he said that it was missing an "s" and I should add the word "sleepy" to it. I said that the problem was the verb; it should be "jumps." He told me that "A quick fox jumps over the lazy brown dog" was used for testing all the letters on the keyboard. I asked him if he liked pangrams and he was noncommittal.

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