Google AdWords Product Manager, Jon Diorio, shared a tip - which he doesn't do every day - on Google+ about pausing your keywords.
He said that before you pause your low converting keywords, make sure to check out click-assisted conversion and last click conversion metrics within your AdWords reporting. These low converting keywords may be assisting in the long term conversion and removing them may result in less overall conversions.
Jon wrote:
#AdWords friends... just a best practice reminder... if you want to pause your low-converting keywords, you'd be wise to check each keyword's "Click-assisted conv. / last click conv." metric first. If the number is 2 or more, then there's a chance that these low converting keywords are actually contributing to conversions on other keywords.
Here is more documentation on how to use these reports to calculate assisted conversions.
Forum discussion at Google+.
