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Permalink Reply by John Newmark on July 19, 2009 at 8:22pm

I would be interested in hearing others views on how exact you are in transcriptions, especially transcribing audio. I find myself editing out verbal placeholders (um, er, etc) and places where someone begins a sentence, stops and rephrases.
One tape I am transcribing is that of two brothers discussing family history, and they continually interrupt each other, and talk over each other, which makes it difficult to transcribe perfectly.

The tape has been digitized so future generations will be able to actually hear the words.

When it comes to transcribing letters, I am much more devoted to accuracy. Though the grammar and spelling errors are often painful.

Permalink Reply by Apple on July 23, 2009 at 1:05pm

I've seen the audio done both ways. When reading a transcription I much prefer it if the um's and ah's are left out. At least with audio you can get the grammar and spelling correct.

I try to type what I see when working with letters and documents but I admit that often I use my best guess based on the context. As painful as the errors are they are also enlightening.

Permalink Reply by Apple on July 23, 2009 at 1:09pm

In old documents a word with ss in it was written fs. I have seen transcriptions where it is written just as it appears - fs. I always transcribe as ss. How do others handle this?