Whether you require interview transcription, dictation, focus transcription or some other form of script, there are key elements that make for a perfect, reader-friendly, usable transcript and here at Transcription City, we’re going to look at some of those key elements.

Especially if looking to utilise medical typing services or some other specialist area, it’s important that your secretary understands the sector you are working in and has specific qualifications and experience within that sector. When typing a transcript, understanding can make all the difference, and using a suitably experienced transcriptionist will mean that your final document will make perfect sense.

Transcription can be a tricky business and one of the hardest things about being a transcriptionist is working with audio. If typing a focus group or interview, sound quality is not always perfect, and speakers can talk over one another, leading to errors. Even if typing from dictation, mishears can happen and mistakes can be made. A good transcription company will have work proofread either by the typist him or herself, or by a second proofreader, so accuracy will be high.

Good punctuation and grammar can make all the difference to a transcript. Emphasis within a sentence can entirely change the meaning of what is being said and a good transcriptionist is also a good writer. Even when working from dictation, errors can be made by a speaker and a highly experienced transcriptionist will fix these and ensure the best transcript, letter or report possible.

Formatting is important within the transcription sector as it can ease reading and make key terms and thoughts easier to skim through. For example, if you have purchased an interview transcript and you need to look for a specific question that came up, it’s easier to look through just the interviewer’s speech if it is in bold, whilst the respondent’s speech is in normal font, so they stand apart. Correct formatting is absolutely essential for subtitle, closed caption and some time coded transcripts.

Any type of writing requires a certain level of decision making and high quality transcripts, scripts and documents are written by typists who are able to use their initiative and think on their feet, as it were. For example, in Intelligent Verbatim transcription, repetitions and slang are omitted, as well as the use of words such as ‘sort of’, ‘kind of,’ etc, but sometimes these phrases are actually important to the meaning of a sentence. It’s for this reason a transcriptionist needs to be able to make a decision on how much to include and how much to omit, which can ultimately make a document an easy read, or something almost entirely intelligible.

Well, those are some of the main points in what makes a good transcript and consequently, factors to take into consideration when choosing your transcription services company. We hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and if you have any questions regarding our transcription services, feel free to contact us via email or call us on 0208 816 8584 or use our live chat service located in the bottom right handcorner.