Legal Style Guide

You should not, under any circumstances, contact Speechpad's customers or anyone referenced in the audio or video files. Doing so would result in immediate termination of your account.

This guide consists of general instructions for legal transcript or review. It should be used in conjunction with the General Transcription Style Guide. Below is an outline of the differences you can find between these style guides. Customer instructions always override style guides so please see the instructions for each file you accept. There may be slight variances between the two. Please email worker@speechpad.com with any questions. 

Table of Contents

Use Ctrl+F to pull up the specific category and to navigate this style guide.

• Cover page

• Filler Words

• Non-Verbal Utterances

• False Starts

• Incomplete Words

• Stutters and Repeated Words

• Trailed-Off Sentences

• Simultaneous Speaking

• Slang

• Template

• Paragraph breaks

• Punctuation

• Ordinals

• Speaker Identification

Filler Words

Filler words are sounds or words in oral conversation that do not add any meaning but rather are uttered when the speaker wishes to maintain continuity with what will be said next while pausing to think. These include words and phrases such as like, okay, I mean, and you know, etc. All instances must be transcribed as spoken.

Example:

Alex: Okay.  Did you, like, you know, sort of, did you have anything to drink before the accident happened?

Andrew: Uh, no.  Uh, I don't think, I mean I've never I drank anything in my life, like, ever.

Non-Verbal Utterances

Um, uh, er, ah are examples of non-verbal utterances. These should have commas around them, as in the example below.

Laughter, sneezing, coughing, throat clearing, crying, sniffling, and gasping are all examples of non-verbal utterances. These sounds are indicated with a descriptive tag in square brackets. For example: [laughs], [clears throat], [crying]. They are inserted in the text at the point where the sound begins.

Example:

Holly: [coughs] Excuse me.  Did he try to, uh, brake?

Matthew: No, he was too, um, busy talking on his cell phone.  [laughs]  Um, that's against the law, isn't it?

Holly: Mm.  [clears throat]  Did you get his name or insurance information?

False Starts

False starts are sentences that are prematurely terminated. For example: “She, uh, she asked me to leave.” In this case, “She, uh,” is a false start that is included in verbatim. 

Incomplete Words

Incomplete words are ones that are partially spoken but cut off by the speaker. In verbatim, only the part of the word that is spoken is written followed by a dash to show that it was cut off. 

Example:

Carrie: And he hit, he hit my fe-, uh, fender.  I saw his veh-, vehicle coming at me.

Andrew: Where did, uh, whe-, where was he coming from?

Stutters and Repeated Words

Stutters are written like this “sh-sh-sh-she” and repeated words are separated by commas, “I, I went home.” No more than three repeats are written even if more were spoken. This saves the transcriber time from having to slow down the audio and count exactly how many times the speaker stuttered.

Example:

Well, I th-th-thought that he, he, uh, was going to turn left. (spoken "Well, I th-th-th-th-th-thought that he, he, uh, was going to turn left."

Trailed Off Sentences

Reporter dashes are used at the end of sentences that trails off before it ends. This happens often in interviews or conversational speech in general. For example, a speaker may trail off when he or she is uncertain or experiences an abrupt suspension of thought:

Example:

Ellen: Were you hurt in the accident?

Cherie: No, I guess not.  I mean, I was shook up, but it wasn’t anything serious, so --

Trail-offs also occur when one speaker prompts another to complete a sentence.

Example:

Lucian: You were traveling north or --

Richard: No, I was traveling south.

Lucian: You were traveling south, okay.

Simultaneous Speaking

Reporter dashes are used after the last word spoken in a sentence before the speaker was interrupted. The remainder of the sentence is truncated, and the interrupting speech is shown next. Then, the remainder of of the first speaker’s sentence is shown, with preceding reporter dashes.

Example:

Katie: Okay.  And you, you said you couldn’t tell if he’d stopped or not --

Krystal: Correct.

Katie: -- but he did have a stop sign?

Krystal: He did have a stop sign, but I didn’t see his car fast enough, um --

Katie: Okay.  And did you --

Krystal: -- to see if he had stopped.

Katie: -- notice how fast he was approaching?

Please note that reporter dashes should be considered punctuation so do not put a period, question mark or exclamation mark after reporter dashes. Reporter dashes should also have a space on either side.

Slang

In verbatim, slang words like ‘cuz, ’em, till, y’all, gonna and goin’ are always typed exactly as spoken.

Affirmation and Negation Utterances

Sometimes, speakers might use words like “uh-huh” or “nuh-uh” instead of saying “yes” or “no.” This can get tricky to transcribe, because the sounds are very similar and difference between an affirmative and negative response may only be a letter or two. 

Examples:

Affirmation: uh-huh, mm-hmm, yeah, yep

Negation: uh-uh, hmm-mm, mm-mm, hun-uh, nuh-uh.

Templates

Please note that templates will be available for most legal files. You can download the template from the job board. If one is not available, please email us at worker@speechpad.com.

Paragraph Breaks

A new paragraph should be inserted when there is a change of topic, change of address, or after 3-5 lines of text.

Examples:

THE COURT:  ALL RIGHT.  GOOD MORNING. (Change of address)

GOOD MORNING, MR. ALLEN. 

THE COURT:  AT THE CHAMBERS CONFERENCE, I INDICATED THAT I WOULD BE PREPARED TO RESENTENCE MR. SHAPIRO TO 50 DAYS  OF COMMUNITY LABOR IN LIEU OF THE 120 DAYS OF COUNTY JAIL TIME -- THE SAME -- THE PROBATION TERMS  WOULD OTHERWISE BE IDENTICAL. (New paragraph)

IS THAT YOUR UNDERSTANDING, MR. ALLEN? 

MR: ALLEN:  YES.

THE COURT:  WELL, I'M INCLINED TO RUN IT FROM TODAY, IN PART BECAUSE THE LENGTH OF THE COMMUNITY     LABOR IS FAIRLY GREAT. (New paragraph)

SO MR. ALLEN, YOU'RE ALL RIGHT WITH THAT?

Punctuation

There should be two spaces after end punctuation (periods, question marks) and colons.

THE COURT:__DO YOU NEED A BREAK, MR. MARTIN?

MR. ALLEN:__YES.__I DO.

Ordinals

Ordinals should only be typed if they're spoken.

Examples:

"He got there on the 19th of November" would be typed as such.

"He got there on November 19" would be typed as such.

This is not a comprehensive guide. If you have questions, please email worker@speechpad.com