TRANSCRIPTION TIPS AND HELPFUL HINTS

[Madeline]

I love the idea of having a transcription tips sticky. I often need a tip I have seen in the past but have trouble finding it again using the search function. If we could collect them in one thread that would save lots of time. Let's give it a try. Somebody report this and we'll see what happens.

Madeline

[dcampbell516]

Ok. I submitted it. Hopefully it will become a sticky folder.

[Madeline]

I finally found one of my favorite tips - I must have used it a dozen times this week alone. It was submitted by MARY_YBS</span> on 2/19/07:

WORD SHORTCUT:</span></span>



This is something I just figured out the other day. If you want to
change a word to bold or italics, you can put the cursor anywhere in
that word and hit CTRL+I, and it will italicize the whole word, or
CTRL+B, and it will bold the word, and you don't have to highlight the
whole word first.


Here's another one I came up with that those of you working for E
might appreciate. You know how we have to use red text sometimes? I
customized my keyboard so I can hit CTRL+D and it will change to red
text. Here's how to do that:Go to Tools, Customize. Under
the"Commands" tab, click on the "Keyboard" button at the
bottom.Under "Categories", select "Format", and then in the menu on
the right (Commands), select "Color:".When you click on "Color:", a
"Color" menu should show upwith a drop-down box for you to select the
color - select red. Thenin the box where it says "Press new shortcut
key", click in that box andpress the sequence ofkeysyou want to use
for the shortcut (in my case, I used CTRL+D). Then click "Assign".
(It will tell you if that sequence of keys is already assigned to
another shortcut).


I feel like I totally butchered that explanation. But if you want
to try it, you can PM me and I'll walk you through it. Now that I have
that shortcut set, if I want to red-text a word, I just click the
cursor anywhere in that word and hit CTRL+D, and it red-texts it. Or,
if you have a few words, you can highlight them and hit CTRL+D, and it
will red-text them.


Mary

[nimblefingers]

Thanks to WhamGrMom</span>, for a macro for putting timestamps in Word documents as you type.



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Actually, there is a way to use ES to timestamp a document you're typing in Word. I do it all the time.



Open ES, click on Settings, then click on the Control tab. Under
"System Wide Hot Key Assignment" click Add to add "Copy Time"(if it's
not already listed - it wasn't on my initial setup, if I remember
correctly). I don't remember if it was the default or I selected it,
but my ES is set up so that Ctrl+T is assigned to "Copy Time."



Whenever I hit Ctrl+T, then, the timestamp info is copied onto the
World clipboard. Then I just have to hit Ctrl+V to paste it. (I then
also set up a third macro to format the timestamp according to the
company's desires.)



So, to timestamp, I just have to hitCtrl+T, Ctrl+V,Ctrl+X (the key I assigned to the formatting macro). Easy!



Hope this helps!

[nimblefingers]

Thanks to hopin'nprayin</span> for a macro to change one space between sentences to two:



</span></span>


I recorded a macro to change my one space between sentences to two.



I used the keystroke feature and simply recorded my keystrokes.



Find and Replace



Find &lt;space&gt;&lt;space Replace with &lt;space&gt; (to avoid any extra spaces in the text)



Find .&lt;space&gt; Replace with .&lt;space&gt;&lt;space&gt;



Find ?&lt;space&gt; Replace with ?&lt;space&lt;space&gt;



Find ."&lt;space&gt; Replace with ."&lt;space&gt;&lt;space&gt;



and so on (including !, .'", ?", .', etc...)







I hit Alt+S, and suddenly my document is formatted correctly,
although it does unfortunately put spaces after U.S., Mr., etc, but
spellcheck catches most of those (since the following word is usually
not capped), and I make a note of them as I transcribe so I can fix
them at the end. I need to add them to my Macro, though, if I ever get
around to it.

</span>

[nimblefingers]

Thanks to Ed Weber of productivitytalk.com for a macro to capitalize the first letter of sentences after two spaces:</span><br style="font-weight: bold;">


Sub Capitalize_Sentences()

'by Ed Weber

' Capitalizes sentences ending with two spaces

Dim rngDoc As range

Dim Count As Long

Count = 0

'First character in document

If ActiveDocument.Characters(1).Case = wdLowerCase Then

ActiveDocument.Characters(1).Case = wdUpperCase

Count = Count + 1

End If

'Process first character in each paragraph

Set rngDoc = ActiveDocument.range.Duplicate

With rngDoc.Find

.ClearFormatting

.MatchWildcards = True

.Text = "^013[a-z]"

While .Execute

rngDoc.Cha racters(2).Case = wdUpperCase

Count = Count + 1

rngDoc.SetRange Start:=rngDoc.End, End:=ActiveDocument.range.End

Wend

End With

'Process character after !.? followed by two spaces

Set rngDoc = ActiveDocument.range.Duplicate

With rngDoc.Find

.ClearFormatting

.MatchWildcards = True

.Text = "[.\!\?][a-z]"

While .Execute

rngDoc.Cha racters(4).Case = wdUpperCase

Count = Count + 1

rngDoc.SetRange Start:=rngDoc.End, End:=ActiveDocument.range.End

Wend

End With

Set rngDoc = Nothing

StatusBar = str(Count) &amp; " changes"

</span>

[nimblefingers]

A thread on audio humming, with possible solutions. Thanks to sguiterrez:



</span></span></span> http://www.wahm.com/forum/forum_post...323300&amp;PN= 5</span></span>



</span>

</span></span></span>

[nimblefingers]

A reference website, thanks to sugar:</span>



</span></span>


I was taking a quick break tonight and did some Stumbling (http://www.stumbleupon.com) and came across this site.



http://www.teacherxpress.com/



It's a site that has a bunch of reference sites all in one place.
It says it's for "busy teachers" but I have a feeling it might come in
handy here and there for busy transcriptionists as well (aside from the
employment links).

[nimblefingers]

A tip for autoformatting multiple speakers, from hollar:



</span></span>
Out
of the many, many tips I've picked up here at the forum, the one I find
most useful and use literally hundreds of times per day is the auto
correct with formatting.</font>

</font>

I use this for putting in my different speakers. </span>I always use the same shortcut numbers and symbols:</font>

</font>

<i style="">Interviewer: </span>[/i](I use “11;”. </span>This changes the type to italics, types in the word, tabs over, and then changes back to non-italic).</font></font>

</font>

For subsequent speakers, I use “12;”, “13;” etcetera. </span>I use the “;” with these because I find I almost <i style="">never[/i] type a number followed by a semi-colon, thus my auto corrects don’t pop up where they shouldn’t.</font>

</font>

To
change these takes literally two to three seconds and I’m set for the
rest of my document, thus saving me many minutes per transcript.</font>

</font>

I wish I could remember who posted that tip, because I would surely give them their just kudos. </span>But … whoever you are … thank you so much!</font>

[nimblefingers]

A way to do job searches online, thanks to ButtonTheCat</span> on Telecommuting board, (thanks Iliketotype for bringing to this board!)



</span>




Check out this thread from TM folder. This is pretty amazing stuff.



http://www.wahm.com/forum/forum_post...323641&amp;PN= 1