Transcript Proofreading Tips for New Court Reporters

Court reporters are punctuation experts. But even the best make mistakes.

[Don’t forget to download your free transcript proofreading checklist below.]

Article authors and journalists often have several readers and editors review their work in the time between writing and publication. Tight deadlines don’t allow that for court reporters.

But the finished transcript is still expected to be largely error free.

The smartest way to get an accurate proofreading is to have another person do it. Reporting firms often have their reporters proofread for each other, but you may not have the luxury of having a second reporter available to check your work.

That presents a choice: hire an outside transcript proofreader or proofread your own transcripts. In my (entirely unbiased, of course) opinion, the former is the way to go, but many reporters choose the latter to minimize expenses.

Tips from Transcript Proofreaders

I asked some other professional transcript proofreaders what advice they’d give a court reporter friend about proofreading her own work.

Peggy Hefner ( ) advises changing the font. I’d expand this to include changing to a markedly different font. Common transcript fonts are Courier (New) and Times New Roman which are both serif fonts. So change to a sans serif such as Helvetica or Calibri.

Also, enlarge it a couple of points. Most transcripts are done in an 11 or 12 point size, so bump it up to 13 or 14. Changing the type style and size forces you to read slightly slower and will often make errors more noticeable.

Peggy and Katherine Ferranti ( ) both also suggest proofing to audio. They find many more dropped or shuffled words that way versus when reading in PDF.

Crista Fodor ( ) says to intentionally read every word, but she adds that this is exceedingly difficult to do with a job you’ve just written. Her suggestion is, if your deadline allows, to set the job aside for a day or two to “get the words out of your head.” When you return, you will be more likely to “read with your eyes, not your memory.”

After your initial reading, Kristen James ( ) suggests — again, if your deadline allows it — reading “backward.” Start at the end, move toward the beginning, and read one Q/A pair at a time. For her, this shifts her brain from reading for comprehension to reading for technical errors.

Matthew Villegas ( ) suggests brushing up on English grammar. Yes, grammar takes a back seat to punctuation with verbatim recording, especially when so little of what’s recorded is grammatically correct. But one thing that transcript proofreaders are acutely aware of is accurate punctuation often depends on a word’s function and location in the sentence.

Tips from Mike, ThatProofreaderGuy

And finally, my own few proofreading tips for new court reporters.

First, print out the transcript and read it on paper versus on the screen. Interestingly, this ties in with changing the font. One “benefit” of serif fonts is that they help give words a learnable overall shape. This makes normal reading easier and quicker by allowing readers to see entire words at a time—as a unit, not as a composition of letters. This is great for casual reading, but exactly what we don’t want when proofreading. So change the font to a sans serif, then print your document.

Second, use text-to-speech. There are several apps that will read text aloud. I think this is even more beneficial for proofreading than proofing to the audio because you hear what is actually recorded on the page, not what was said.

Third, compile a list of errors you tend to make often. For example, I know I often type “you” when I mean “your” and miskey “-tion” endings as “-tiin.” Make a special pass over the job looking specifically for those errors you, personally, make often.

Free Transcript Proofreading Checklist

And finally, download my free proofreading checklist for court reporters ( – 172 KB). If you stick to this checklist, you will give yourself a fighting chance at successfully proofreading your own work.

The best bet—again, in my entirely unbiased opinion—is to save yourself the time and headache by hiring me an affordable transcript proofreader to give your transcript that last glance. But contrary to what you may hear, yes, it is absolutely possible for a new court reporter to proofread their own transcripts.