But when it comes to the print media's coverage of the 2000 campaign, the talk has been a little too straight. Uh, I ask for their support. Gore had been responding to a question that had caught him off guard, Seelye says, which made an exacting transcription newsworthy. It wasn't always this way, according to campaign-trail veterans. The Washington Post's David Broder agrees that in most cases, verbatim quoting is a mistake.
Some reporters consider that lack of fluency a tool for psychological portraiture.
If I want to show that someone sounds as if he's lying, or is pretending to know more than he does, or is being arrogant, or simply a dork, I might use all those um s and tangents to convey what I guess is the subtext of who the person actually is. SEND a letter to the editor. READ recent feedback.