Libby Nelson
is Vox's policy editor, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.
Where do people, um, say "um" more often, and, uh, where do they say "uh"? Jack Grieve, a United Kingdom-based linguist, analyzed data from Twitter and came up with this map for Quartz:
The Midwest is "um" territory (except for Minnesota and Wisconsin, which say "uh"). Other analyses have found women say "um" and men say "uh." And how we use "um" and "uh" on Twitter — where they often have a sarcastic or snarky bent — might not be identical to how we use them in everyday speech.
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