Transcript forms
Verbatim
Word-for-word transcription that includes hesitation, repetition, interruptions and often pauses.
Verbatim means word for word. A verbatim transcript includes everything: the “er” and “you know”, false starts, repetitions, interrupted sentences, and often laughter, pauses and overlapping speech too.
What it is used for
- Conversation and discourse analysis, where how something is said is the data itself.
- Court cases and interrogations, where word-for-word rendering is the requirement.
- Qualitative research where hesitation and self-correction carry meaning.
- Medical and psychological work where the exact wording matters.
Why most people do not need it
A verbatim transcript is heavy going. A perfectly ordinary sentence looks like this:
Yes, so, er, I think that we, that we should, or, that is to say, we do have to look at whether it, whether it is even possible first.
For a meeting summary this is not merely unnecessary, it makes the text unusable. Then clean or edited is the right form.
Degrees of verbatim
Full verbatim includes everything, hesitation and non-verbal sounds included.
Clean verbatim keeps all the content but removes the “er”, the false starts and the repetitions. This is the most common form in journalism and in interviews that will be quoted.
Decide the form before you start editing. Changing your mind halfway means going through the text twice.