Literary and Jury Charge Dictation
What this domain tests
Literary and jury charge dictation test your ability to supply structure, not just words. In literary material the reader does not say 'comma' or 'new paragraph,' yet the finished transcript must carry punctuation, quotation marks, and paragraphing. In jury charge dictation a judge reads pattern instructions at roughly 200 words per minute, dense with numbers, defined terms, and statutory citations, and the transcript must preserve the charge's architecture.
Core rules
- Punctuation is editorial, wording is not. You insert commas, semicolons, dashes, and quotation marks from the speaker's pauses and syntax; you never change the words.
- Handle verbal cues. Spoken 'quote' and 'unquote' become quotation marks; a long quoted passage may be set as a block quote. 'Period' and 'new paragraph' spoken aloud are executed, not transcribed.
- Paragraph where the reader shifts subject, not at fixed intervals.
- Preserve numbering and citations in jury charges. Write 'Charge No. 12,' 'O.C.G.A. § 16-2-1,' and defined terms such as 'proximate cause' and 'preponderance of the evidence' consistently.
- Anticipate Georgia pattern language from the Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions (Civil and Criminal volumes): 'I charge you that,' 'burden of proof,' 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' 'malice,' 'the court charges you.'
- Report the charge conference and objections verbatim, and note when the jury was excused with a whereupon parenthetical.
- Do not fix the law. If the judge misstates a rule or a citation, transcribe what was said.
Worked example
Dictated: The court charges you that, quote, a person commits the offense of theft by taking when he unlawfully takes, unquote, the property of another. The output places a comma after 'that,' opens quotation marks before 'a person,' closes them after 'takes,' and keeps the period inside the closing mark. Reasoning: the quoted language is a defined offense and must be visually set off so an appellate reader can locate it instantly; the surrounding sentence remains the judge's own words.
Traps that cost marks
- Capitalizing 'Court' in mid-sentence when the word is generic rather than naming this tribunal.
- Writing 'judgement' - the legal spelling is 'judgment.'
- Inserting commas that change meaning, especially around restrictive clauses.
- Missing small connectives ('said,' 'aforesaid,' 'hereinafter') that carry legal weight.
- Failing to paragraph when the reader moves from facts to law.