Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the first recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, in 1888. Mr. Erard, rather ingeniously, traces the prohibition on um and other speech flaws to the advent of radio in the early 1920s.

[…] proposes missionization costs to be borne by the Coast Guard in fiscal year 2006 . The cost of these planes has been outside the original Deepwater plan […]

His Elvis impersonation was embarrassingly overcooked.

Having [Richard] Nixon woo the hard-shell Republicans and ardent anti-Communists and pleasing [Robert Alphonso] Taft and [Joseph] McCarthy, however useful for expunging me-tooism from the campaign, constantly threatened to jeopardize the greatest potential source of [Dwight David] Eisenhower's political strength: that fickle, uncommitted, apolitical, independent vote.