Style and Format

Our Styles and Formats

Your transcript will contain the following styles and formats, unless you give us special instructions to do things differently:

We typicall insert timestamps every 1-2 minutes, to help you easily find the spot in the digitized audio to verify what was said.

We do not insert superfluous comments, such as um, uh, you know, uh huh, OK, etc. unless it's essential to the meaning of what's being said. But if you want a pure verbatim transcript, where every little word is transcribed, we can do that.

We typically write out words like wanna, cuz, gonna, etc. as want to, because, going to, etc. - unless you want us to do otherwise.

We typically correct obvious grammar errors, e.g. she don’t know = she doesn’t know. An exception are words like "ain't," which we may leave in place.

If harsh four-letter swear words are mentioned in the recording, we typically will use asterisks or hyphens to represent what was said, unless you instruct otherwise. But we will write out mild swear words.

When there are two speakers - an interviewer and interviewee - we label the speakers "INTERVIEWER" and "RESPONDENT". When there are more than one interviewee, we typically label the second one as "RESPONDENT 2", assuming the voices easily can be differentiated. For your transcript, if you prefer that we label the speakers something else, such as by their initials, their first or last names, or such as "Q" and "A," please let us know.

When it is not an interviewee/interviewer format, we typically label the speakers "SPEAKER 1", SPEAKER 2", etc., assuming the voices easily can be differentiated. If we can easily determine their names, we typically will try to label them with their actual names. Or we may write a distinguishing indicator such as "FEMALE VOICE" or "FOREIGN SPEAKER". Of course, you or someone familiar with the voices can go through the transcript and insert the actual names.

To see a sample transcript, click here.