Fluency and disfluency – their benefits for communication, writing and editing

When I was in primary school, our timetable included one period of music each week. I really don’t know why, because the school had no musical instruments or other equipment to support our learning of music, and our teachers were not trained to teach music. They always seemed to be at a loss about what to do in the allotted 55 minutes. Thus, in effect, the ‘music teacher’s’ role was to ensure we didn’t get up to mischief. Which is why we usually sat there in the classroom with nothing to do, bored out of our little scones.

One day, someone suggested that maybe we pupils could sing. Of course, most of us knew exactly who could sing and whom we wanted to sing. After some cajoling on our part, the teacher agreed to a class singalong, provided we didn’t make too much noise that would alert the principal. Once we had exhausted a second round of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ – we knew only two verses – we moved on to ‘I see trees’ (‘What a Wonderful World’, based on Louis Armstrong’s 1967 recording).

Then all was quiet as we waited for someone to volunteer a solo.

To my surprise, the hand of one of the smaller boys in the row beside me shot up. We were probably the same age, but I was more than a head taller than Jeremy (not his real name), though that wasn’t the reason for my surprise. It was that Jeremy had a profound speech impediment (what people in the UK refer to as a ‘stammer’ and in the US a ‘stutter’). It was a brave move, given how relentlessly he was teased by the other boys, both for being short and for his stammer.

Naturally, it took Jeremy a little while to announce that the song he was about to sing was in honour of his mother. The next moment I was jolted out of my complacency as Jeremy gave a sweet, choirboy perfect – and dare I say, fluent – rendition of ‘Mother of Mine’ (as popularised by Scottish singer Neil Reid in 1971).

For those 4 minutes I was mesmerised, not only by his voice but also by the wondering of where the stammer had gone. Jeremy’s transitions were smooth as silk, though I found the lyrics so sickly sweet as to be ‘vomit-worthy’. When he finished singing there was a moment of quiet astonishment across the classroom, and then we all broke into loud applause, pupils and teacher alike.

“You should sing all day, Jeremy,” remarked some wisecrack from the back of the class. Of course, they meant so he wouldn’t stammer.

Until recently, I had not thought of this incident for decades. I certainly did not think of stammering as a disability. But is it?

What is stammering?

The medical condition of stammering is known as ‘disfluency’. About 1 per cent of the world’s population is affected by the condition, with males affected more than females, at a ratio of 1:5.

Speech Pathology Australia defines ‘stuttering’, or ‘developmental stuttering’ as ‘Disruption in the fluency of verbal expression... [that] is not readily controllable’.

Somewhat confusingly, Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary online defines ‘disfluency’ as the adjective for ‘not fluent: to be disfluent in a language due to lack of practice’. Which seems to suggest that one could reduce or eliminate a stammer through practice.

Genetic links

Research has consistently pointed to a genetic link, with stammering found to be common in family groups. But a 2025 study by scientists Hannah Polikowsky and Douglas Shaw from the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, incorporating the DNA of 1 million individuals, has uncovered major new findings about stammering: with 57 distinct genomic regions mapped to 48 genes, there is strong ‘overlap with traits like depression, autism, and even beat synchronization (your ability to accurately synchronize your movements with a musical beat)’.

From inconvenience to disability

Last month I listened to the musician, composer and poet JJJJJerome Ellis being interviewed on Radio National’s The Music Program (6 Dec 2025) by host Andrew Ford, who also played samples of Ellis’s work in beautifully curated interludes. In their latest album, Vesper Sparrow, Ellis uses speech, music and literature to explore and describe aspects of their intersectional identities, one of which is disfluency.

One track on the album is a recording of a phone call by Ellis to a library, to request a book. At first, we hear the pleasant, helpful voice of the librarian, but then things begin to unravel in the (apparent) silence as, on the one hand, the caller (Ellis) searches for their voice and, on the other, the confused service provider asks repeatedly, “Hello, are you still there?”

Listening to this track changed my perception of disfluency, as existing on a spectrum of experience: from no problem at all, to an inconvenience, to a disability (and beyond). Not a medical condition to be treated or cured, but a challenge in how an individual experiences the world.

If Ellis were to email the library or access its website, his experience would probably mirror that of anyone else requesting a book. If he were to attend the library in person his stammer might be an inconvenience, but on the phone it becomes a disability.

The glottal stop

Writers and editors are well familiar with the glottal stop (or glottal plosive), which is the action of voluntarily closing our vocal cords quickly to stop sound.

Familiar examples of the glottal stop in English include words like uh-oh (the glottal stop is indicated by the hyphen), button, it, ate and ouch.

‘Glottalling’ (particularly ‘t-glottalling’), is a common feature of British dialects, such as Cockney, Leeds and Glaswegian dialects. If you’re interested in hearing some contemporary examples, the website English Phonetics and Pronunciation (created by three teachers in Barcelona, Spain) has short video clips showing examples of t-glottalling in Standard Southern British English (Emelia Clarke), estuary English (Maise Williams) and Cockney (Adele).

Many other Englishes use glottalling. For example, in the West Indies, Bajan English (of Barbados) uses the glottal allophone for ‘t’, and sometimes also for ‘k’ and ‘p’. The first time I visited Samoa, I enjoyed hearing people pronounce words like la‘u (meaning ‘my’ or ‘mine’), and the third and fourth genders of fa‘a fafine (in the manner of a woman) and fa‘a fatama (in the manner of a man), with the ‘ indicating the glottal stop.

Now, take it from me that it’s very easy to fall down a rabbit hole when exploring the vast number of languages and dialects that glottarise – and that hole gets very deep when the search extends to pronunciations on YouTube. (You have been warned.)

My point here is to show that glottarisation is a very common feature in spoken language and it is a voluntary stop, whereas the stammer is not.

The glottal block

JJJJJerome Ellis’s notion of the stammer as a glottal block clarifies the nature of it as disability: it restricts the person’s ability to speak and to be heard. It can also ‘block’ conversation and, by extension, thwart the organic development of relationship. A conversation held in person can be hindered by attendant frustration and embarrassment on both sides; or, conversely, enhanced by patience and empathy, also on both sides of the discourse.

As Ellis says, when someone who is listening to them cannot see them, they may not know whether the glottal block means:

(a) They have stopped talking because they’ve completed their side of the dialogue.

(b) They have stopped to consider their response.

(c) They are waiting for their interlocutor’s response.

(d) The telephonic or Wifi connection has dropped out or been disconnected.

Another possibility is that the speaker may be upset or crying, or perhaps something has happened to them (e.g. they have collapsed).

Glottal stops and blocks in writing

Glottal stops do not feature often in the written word. Except, perhaps, in dialogue and poetry. Here, I’m thinking of examples of works of fiction on the experience of enslaved peoples, such as Roots (1977) by Alex Haley and River Sing Me Home (2023) by Eleanor Shearer, both of which feature glottal stops in dialogue. Some readers don’t like them – they become impatient with having to interpret unfamiliar patterns of speech – while others enjoy them as signs of authenticity or connection with history.

Other than the ellipsis (…), I can’t think of written elements of language represented in the same way that a glottal block affects a speaker’s speech. Too many ellipses will likely cause the reader to become frustrated and impatient for the story to continue. Such a ‘block’ might be seen as akin to writer’s block (the author having run out of ideas) or perhaps signalling that the story has finished.

But as writers and editors we might learn something from the glottal block when we consider their potential (figurative) equivalents in prose: elements of syntax that influence pace, tone, mood and that elusive ‘x-factor’ that helps the reader to connect with the narrative and the character(s). Consider works such as Girl, Woman, Other (2019) by Bernadine Evaristo and In the Dream House (2020) by Carmen Maria Machado, both of which pushed the boundaries of narrative and stylistic convention.

Think about what is not being said – or how what is being said – to convey an underlying emotion or sensation, like dread or grief or a cheeky sense of mirth or irony. So that, for example, when a reviewer describes a piece of writing as having a ‘ghostly’ quality, even when ghostly apparitions are not explicit in the text, their interlocutor knows exactly what they mean.

Given the research I mentioned earlier, genetically linking the stammer with beat synchronisation, I wonder whether it is a coincidence that ‘stops’ feature in music. In the first instance, a ‘stop’ is a physical mechanism used to alter the tone colour (timbre, or sound profile) of an organ, harpsicord or early piano. A second, theoretical, instance is the double, triple and other multiples of stops, which use two or more notes played simultaneously on a stringed instrument such as the violin, cello and double bass, to add richness, depth and harmony.

What can ‘stops’ and ‘blocks’ tell us in story?

What richness and depth might a figurative stop or block offer to the written word? How might we signify such elements in text?

Textual stops (or pauses) and blocks (or closures) may offer new, innovative ways to truly connect with reading audiences – whether we are writing in fiction or non-fiction.

As Ellis asks “… what stuttering can teach us about listening, generosity, and justice”, so too might we ask what it can teach us about writing, reading and communication.

Benefits of disfluency

Disfluency has meaning beyond the condition of stammering, such as in industry and in psychological research concerned with cognitive disfluency.

For example, in industry, ‘disfluency theory is a psychological and educational concept that suggests introducing deliberate challenges, difficulties, or “frictions” in a process can enhance learning, comprehension, and performance.’

In other words, when a task demands cognitive effort, it requires the person to be deeply engaged, and the benefit is that its meaning becomes more deeply embedded in our memory and our skills. An example that is likely to resonate with older generations is that when you learn the steps in long division it helps you understand the mathematical equation that led to the result and that understanding may lead to broader application, outside the mathematical context. If you simply plug the equation into a calculator, all you get is the result.

Recent research suggests that superior outcomes can be achieved through disfluency, which can ‘prompt people to process information more carefully, deeply, and abstractly, and mitigates the social problems of overdisclosure and reflexive xenophobia’.

No shortcuts in editing

An example relevant in this context is to compare developmental editing with proofreading – both are important steps in the publishing process, but the latter does not require the deep level of understanding of a text as the former.

Apart from using generative artificial intelligence (which might defeat the purpose), there is no shortcut to an effective developmental edit of a manuscript – it simply has to be done through deep reading, comprehension and the steps of professional practice.

JJJJJerome Ellis

Watch JJJJJerome Ellis: Loops of Retreat: “My thesis is that blackness, disfluency and music are forces that open time.”

Read: Aster of Ceremonies and The Clearing and the author’s poems

See: tours and exhibitions

Suggested citation for this post:
Otmar, R. (2026). Fluency and disfluency – their benefits for communication, writing and editing (7 Jan.). Viewed at https://reneeotmar.com.au/blog