I remember watching a presentation a few years ago by a Microsoft presenter who seemed to start every sentence with "so". It quickly became all the rage amongst speakers from Microsoft and I always notice it and cringe. It is a completely unconscious "tick". Another one of the "hold please, just gathering my thoughts here..." ticks.

Many years ago I had been inflicted with "y'know" disease. I forced myself to become very self-conscious about it and eventually shed the annoying habit.

So (M&M), on Friday I was fortunate to have some pre-TechEd speaker coaching for 90 minutes. So (M&M) the coach pointed out that I said "so" a ridiculous number of times. I had caught the dreaded "so" virus from spending so much time with people from Microsoft.

So (M&M) David (coach) asked me what my favorite food was. "Chocolate, of course", I told him. "More specific please..."and I chose M&Ms off of the top of my head. Gee, I wonder why? :-)

He then told me that he would say M&M every time he heard me say "so". I probably earned a pounds worth. I got to the point where I would stop and say "M&M" every time I heard myself say the dreaded word. It is not a word to replace with "uhm" "therefore" etc. It is a word to replace with a pause. It's okay not to fill up every moment with sounds coming out of your mouth, he told me (though not quite in those words).

SO (M&M) if you catch me saying M&M during my Tech Ed presentations, it's just because David replaced my "so" tick with a temporary "so (M&M)" tick until I can finally replace it with a silent contemplative pause.