The Keynote Reading: Homophones, Dialect, and an Editor's Request
You are engaged to report the keynote reading at a county bar association's literary luncheon. The featured author reads a 1,400-word unpublished essay at roughly 130 words per minute, alternating between a lectern manuscript and passages delivered from memory. The printed program titles the piece "The Gantlet of Grief," but the author says "gauntlet." She credits a mentor whose name she pronounces "SIE-more"; the program prints "Seamore." Twice she drops into dialogue written in heavy dialect, and once she adds a sentence that does not appear in the manuscript she allowed you to see. On the page she uses both "judgment" and "judgement." Delivery is promised in 48 hours to the association's newsletter editor, who asks you to "smooth out the dialect so it reads well in print."
1. How do you resolve the program-versus-pronunciation conflicts for "Gantlet/gauntlet" and "Seamore/SIE-more"? What principle governs?
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Principle: literary dictation is transcribed verbatim as spoken, but sound does not establish spelling. Vowels and stress cannot distinguish homophones, so the reporter resolves orthography from an authoritative written source - never by guess and never by personal preference.
- Surname: adopt the printed program's "Seamore." The program is the author-supplied written record; "SIE-more" and "SEE-more" are indistinguishable in sound, so the ear cannot choose between them.
- Title word: both "gantlet" and "gauntlet" are legitimate variants, and they are homophones in most American speech. Follow the manuscript she actually read from, since that is the author's own text; if her spoken reading and the manuscript diverge and you cannot tell which she read, query the author or the program chair rather than deciding for her.
- Do not silently harmonize. If the two written sources conflict and you cannot resolve it before deadline, transcribe what was said using the best-supported spelling and flag the point to the editor in a covering note - outside the certified text, not inside it.
2. The newsletter editor asks you to smooth the dialect and standardize "judgment/judgement" throughout. What is your response, and what alternative do you offer?
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Refuse the edit, and explain why it is the wrong product.
- The transcript records what was spoken. Editing dialect or standardizing spelling creates a text that was never uttered, and you would be certifying to its accuracy.
- The dialect spellings are the author's craft, not errors; "judgment" and "judgement" are both correct, and the variation on the page is the author's, not yours to normalize.
- A reporter has no authority to improve a speaker's grammar, style, or usage. The same passage in a courtroom would be transcribed as delivered, and the literary setting does not loosen that duty.
Offer instead:
- The verbatim transcript, certified as accurate.
- If the newsletter wants a readable feature, the editor should work from the author's manuscript and label the result as an edited excerpt, with any quoted passage checked against the manuscript rather than the transcript.
- If a stretch is genuinely ambiguous between two words, note the timestamps/pages so the editor can confirm with the author.
3. How do you handle the sentence the author ad-libbed that is not in the manuscript, and what limits apply if she later asks to review the transcript?
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Include it. The ad-libbed sentence was spoken to the audience; it is part of the proceeding you were engaged to record. Omitting it because it is absent from the manuscript would make the transcript a record of the manuscript rather than of the reading.
- Do not bracket it as "[ad-lib]" or otherwise characterize its status. Editorial labels of that kind inject the reporter's commentary into the text; if the sponsor needs a manuscript-to-delivery comparison, that is a separate product produced outside the certified transcript.
- Transcribe the sentence in the same style as the surrounding text, resolving punctuation by the sense of the spoken delivery.
Review, if the engagement provides for it: any review is limited to catching transcription errors - spelling of names, technical terms, obvious mishearings. It is not an opportunity to revise wording, restore manuscript language, or delete the ad-lib. If the author proposes a substantive change, decline and, if she insists, note the request rather than making the change; the transcript reflects the delivery as it occurred.