Renegade reader Alicia Cosgrove (Wordwych on The RW blog) has a great tip for transcribing interviews. I’ll let her tell you herself:

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I write for a small local newspaper, doing human interest stories and local news. This, of course, requires me to interview many people, both by phone and in person with laptop balanced on anything that’ll hold it. (No joke – I’ve conducted interviews in cow pastures, llama barns, bars, Chinese restaurants and, once, in a home where a pair of 5-foot iguanas wandered about the living room floor while an 8-inch-long baby caiman gnawed curiously on the corner of my laptop.) I’ve found that by creating my own “shorthand” in Microsoft Word’s Auto-Correct function saves me a lot of time. There are common words that I have reduced to just a few keystrokes so that I can keep up with what my interviewees are saying. I love the Auto-Correct function (I’m one of those people who knows that a-b-o-u-t spells “about” but whose fingers want to type a-b-u-o-t), so I decided to make it work for me by creating custom corrections for my specific shorthand.

Examples:

PPL = PEOPLE

CMT = COMMUNITY

REC = RECOMMEND

GSO = GREENSBORO

OR = OAK RIDGE

SUM = SUMMERFIELD

BS = BROWNS SUMMIT

HP = HIGH POINT

NC = NORTH CAROLINA

HM = HOME

HS = HUSBAND

DAG = DAUGHTER

FD = FIRE DEPARTMENT

SD = SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

PD = POLICE DEPARTMENT

The A-C function inserts the full words as I’m typing along. I started out using it for local town names, and then realized that my typed shorthand was getting rather cryptic. I started looking at other words and abbreviations I used frequently, then just went into Word’s Tools, then Auto-Correct options, where it’s easy to make the tweaks. Town names, school names, states, departments and annual events are just a few of the things that can be whittled down to a few keystrokes. I’m a swift typist anyway, but this little trick has enabled me to increase my speed – not to mention dazzling a few of my interviewees and my boss, who has been known to compare my typing to machine gun fire.

I rarely have trouble with the A-C function inserting the full word before I can finish typing the word I intend. I can type “receive,” “receipt,” and so on without any problems with the A-C trying to toss in “recommend.” The only real annoyance I find is that when I want to type “rec” as in “rec center” or “parks & rec”, the A-C function tries to insert “recommend.” I must then remove the unwanted letters by backspacing. My work-around for that is to use ‘reccenter’ or ‘parknrec’ when I am speed-typing my interview notes and quotes.

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Thanks, Alicia! This is a very helpful idea. [lf]

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