Quotation Marks, Interruptions, and Numbers in a Jury-Trial Transcript
You are transcribing a jury trial in Kootenai County. Your rough notes contain this passage from plaintiff's counsel's closing argument: "the defendant told the officer and I quote I didn't see no stop sign unquote and then he said he was going about 45 maybe 50 miles per hour on highway 95 also he said quote everybody rolls through that intersection unquote." A little later the witness says he was "at the corner of 3rd and main at 10:30 pm on june 5." The judge interrupts counsel mid-sentence: "Counsel, that's argument." Counsel responds: "Your honor, I'm quoting the witness." Your office style guide requires verbatim transcription, standard punctuation, and consistent treatment of numbers; it permits [sic] but discourages unnecessary editorial insertions.
1. Punctuate and capitalize the closing-argument passage as it should appear in the transcript, and explain your choices.
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A defensible rendering is: "The defendant told the officer, and I quote, 'I didn't see no stop sign,' unquote, and then he said he was going about 45, maybe 50, miles per hour on Highway 95. Also, he said, quote, 'Everybody rolls through that intersection,' unquote." Use quotation marks around the words the attorney is expressly quoting and place the comma inside the closing quotation mark. Set off "and I quote" and "unquote" with commas because they are parenthetical oral quotation markers. Capitalize "Highway 95" as a proper name. Do not add [sic] after "didn't see no": the double negative is the witness's quoted speech, and [sic] would be an unnecessary editorial comment that could annoy the jury and the parties. If your style guide requires [sic] for grammatical errors in quoted material, apply it consistently and sparingly.
2. The judge interrupts counsel mid-sentence and counsel responds. How should the interruption and the response be shown?
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Show the interruption at the exact point it occurred, using an em dash rather than an ellipsis. An em dash signals that the speaker was cut off; an ellipsis signals that the speaker trailed off. The lines should read something like: "MR. HALE: ... Everybody rolls through that-" then "THE COURT: Counsel, that's argument." then "MR. HALE: Your Honor, I'm quoting the witness." Capitalize "Your Honor" as a title of address; do not capitalize "counsel" when it is a generic reference, though some style guides capitalize it in direct address, so follow your office's rule consistently. Do not move the judge's interruption to a later line or complete counsel's sentence for him. Preserve the dash and the incomplete sentence exactly.
3. How should "3rd and main," "10:30 pm," and "june 5" be rendered, and what principle governs?
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In formal transcript style: "Third and Main," "10:30 p.m.," and "June 5." Spell out ordinal street names in running text unless the local style guide requires figures, capitalize street names as proper nouns, use lowercase "p.m." with periods, and do not add "th" to a date when the month precedes the day. The governing principle is consistency: choose a style, apply it throughout the transcript, and do not switch between "3rd" and "Third" or "pm" and "p.m." based on how the speaker happened to say it. Where the speaker's exact pronunciation matters, such as a quoted document or a numerical estimate, preserve the spoken words but apply the same formatting convention. If the court has a standing style guide, it controls over personal preference.