Proofreading the Bench-Trial Transcript

1. Capitalize “Counsel” because it begins the judge’s utterance after the speaker label. Leave “had went” and “seen”: the audio confirms those words, and they are the speaker’s grammar, not your transcription error. Do not change them to “had gone” or “saw.” 2. Change “May 5th, 2021” to “May 5, 2021”; full dates do not take an ordinal suffix. Change “$10,000 dollars” to “$10,000” or “ten thousand dollars”; the dollar sign already denotes dollars. These are style/transcription corrections. 3. “Who’s attorney” requires an audio check. If the speaker said “whose,” correct the homophone; if the speaker said “who’s” (who is), leave it and do not add [sic] automatically. 4. “123 Main St.” may be expanded to “123 Main Street” if your style manual requires it; “5 p.m.” is acceptable as a time. 5. Leave “I ain’t never signed nothing” exactly. It is dialect and grammar, not a transcription error. Do not add [sic] merely because it is nonstandard. If your style uses double quotation marks for quoted speech, change the single marks to double. 6. “5 milligrams” is a measurement; if your manual uses numerals for measurements, leave it. If it spells out all numbers under 100, change to “five milligrams,” but apply the rule consistently.

Decline, respectfully and clearly. Explain that “had went” and “seen” are the speaker’s words, confirmed by the audio, and that changing them would misrepresent the record. The transcript may be published, but publication does not change the standard: it must be a true and accurate record. You may offer alternatives: publish a separate cleaned version clearly labeled as an unofficial reading copy, or include an editor’s note explaining that the official transcript preserves the spoken words. If the judge wants to correct his own statement, he can do so on the record; a chambers request or the judge’s memory is not a source for altering a transcript. If there is a genuine transcription error, correct it against the audio and note the correction. Document the ex parte request and do not alter the notarized certificate. Your independence is part of the certification.

For item 3, resolve “who’s” versus “whose” by listening to the audio. If the speaker said “whose,” it is a homophone error by the transcriber and should be corrected. If the speaker said “who’s” meaning “who is,” leave it as spoken. For item 5, do not use [sic] for “ain’t never.” It is dialect, not an apparent error in quoted written material, and [sic] can look like mockery or editorializing. Generally, [sic] is reserved for quoted written text that contains an obvious error; spoken grammar is preserved without it. If your style manual requires [sic] for certain obvious errors, use it sparingly and consistently, and never to signal disapproval. Brackets signal editorial insertion, so any bracketed note should be necessary and neutral.