QA Style Guidelines

VERY IMPORTANT! Always check and expand the QA Guidelines to the right of your screen for each file. This is where you will see if the file is Clean Verbatim (CV) or Full Verbatim (FV), Basic or Advanced. The file may also have special instructions about speaker names or a different style that you might need to follow. Clicking on QA Guidelines will open the Guidelines box. You can then click on the different lines within the guidelines to expand each section, which is especially important if the file does not follow the standard default guide.

The guidelines may also specify which English spelling to use, US or British. US English is our default unless otherwise noted. You must pass the appropriate Accent Exam to receive files other than US English. Regardless of listed accent, we always use US, not British, punctuation.

Basic Formatting

The following section will briefly outline standard formatting procedures for QA sessions. Note that these differ from transcription work completed on the Jobs/Transcription page.

Start With a Capital Letter

Sessions should always start with a capital letter, even if the recording begins mid-sentence. If the speaker starts mid-word, then you can leave out that partial word, but if you can hear almost the whole word and are certain what it should be, include it.

The exception to the always-start-with-a-capital rule would be if you begin your session with a tag such as [music], [inaudible], [crosstalk], etc. Tags are always lowercase, no matter their position in a sentence (except the Guess Tag, which adopts the formatting of whatever your guess is). Format the first word following the tag as normal: cap if it is a proper noun or the beginning of a new sentence; use lowercase if it is mid-sentence.

End With Closing Punctuation

End each session as though it were the end of the sentence, even if it is mid-sentence. This usually means ending with a period or question mark, NOT ellipses or dashes. If the speaker ends mid-word and you are reasonably sure what that word should be, then please include it. Otherwise, you can leave out the partial word at the end and close with punctuation as though it were the end of their sentence. If the session ends with a long period of silence, please use the [silence] tag, with no punctuation after the tag.

Change of Speaker

Each change of speaker needs a new line and timestamp. To create a new line, hit Enter/Return once. Some QAs prefer double spacing, which creates an extra white space between text. Either way is fine, but be consistent. As you can see in Preview mode, each new line automatically creates a new paragraph, whether you choose single or double spacing.

Paragraph Breaks

An integral part of the QA's job is to break up long single-speaker monologues into paragraphs. As with a change of speaker, this means hitting Enter once to create the new line and timestamping that new line, even though the speaker ID will be the same as the previous paragraph. For No Timestamp files, you must still create a new line for paragraph breaks where appropriate. If a speaker drones on for more than 2 minutes, try to break it up at or around midway through the monologue (or thirds, etc., depending on length of monologue) at a clear topic change.

It helps to proofread the document in Preview mode to find the most logical place to break up overly long paragraphs. Note that the different paragraphs may not be even in length. Usually anywhere between 1-2 minutes is a good paragraph size. See the Paragraphing section of the Style Guide for more tips.

There may be special cases where a clear topic change occurs before the 1-minute mark. For example, in some files, the interviewer's portion is cut out of the audio and we hear only the interviewee's responses. In that case, each response should be a separate paragraph and should be timestamped.