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Talk to the tab (cab) driver or 'short shirt', when you meant to say 'short skirt'... how about when you start a sentence with 'er, er, er...'?

Like me, you may be a generally articulate, well-worded sort of person, but that does not seem to stop a barrage of verbal blunders like the above slipping from your mouth out of absolutely nowhere. (One of the most famous ones quoted in the book is "You have hissed all my mystery lectures.")

These are everyday linguistic phenomena that happen to the best of us, and in his book, Um Michael Erard threads together these peculiarities of humanity: language and the art of mixing it all up.

The act of misspeaking is a fascinating discovery not only of unconscious or bad habits, but also the most basic properties of the language and the way in which our mind, and its dynamics, connects thoughts to sounds - whether we are thinking about technology or philosophy or even sports.

Systematic compilations of verbal errors have been recorded for centuries. The first was Arab scholar Al-Kisali's The Errors of Populace.

Today, for those interested in psychology and its cognitive and developmental aspects, this book is considered a discerning exposition of the relations between memory and speech and how we assign meaning and learn language in the first place.

Although Erard's writing style seems at times contradictory, this book draws out some interesting, if not unlikely, theories.

A personal favourite are the conjectures Erard makes in a section dedicated to US President George Bush and his linguistic, er, ways.

Born in Texas, US, and raised in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, a young Erard grew up writing stories. After his first job working at a newspaper when he was 14, Erard decided to follow his flair for writing.

Erard went to college in Massachusetts and then travelled to Taiwan where he spent two years teaching English.

In 1993, he went back to Texas to pursue graduate study and was awarded an MA in linguistics in 1996. He then went on to graduate with a PhD in English in 2000.

In 1998, he became a contributing writer for the Texas Observer.

With his popular works on culture, politics and technology frequently appearing in publications such as the New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Foreign Policy, The New Scientist and Lingua Franca, it wasn't long before Erard decided to write his own first book.

UM, is his recently released debut novel, in which Erard is on a linguistic quest to explore and explain the meanings behind our verbal slips and stumbles.

Erard and his wife live in Austin, Texas.

The writer is an International Student Correspondent for NOTES, studying at the University of Sydney, Australia