Taking cue from the title and my past blog posts, I think you can guess what the topic for today would be like.
Yes.
I’ve been asked to transcribe some conversations between women talking about a topic I don’t know if I completely understand. I’m kidding. Of course, I understand. What did you think? I’m some kind of slow in the head, or something? You’d be right, but that’s not the point.
Anyway, the task was more of editing than actual transcribing, but a good trick when editing a transcription is also listening to the material. Editing requires less effort, though, as the work is already there and you only need to tweak it in some parts to make it as perfect as possible. A decent command of the language being transcribed is also a plus when fixing transcriptions. Meaning, basic grammar rules, spelling, knowledge of common expressions – both literal and figurative – are handy when dealing with tasks such as this.
For example, the transcription says, “Yes, Maggie, I know that the people who visited the place was not you’re kind of people.” I know, too weak of an example, but what can you do?
Anyway, this error is one of the most common ones made by English writers – both native and, you know, non-native.It’s not that we’re stupid; it’s just that sometimes, when you write something, and your method of editing is reading it out loud, there’s a possibilty you’ll miss this small mistake as the correct word sounds almost identical. One good thing to remember to avoid making this error again is, when editing through reading, to say the words that comprise any contractions that you have in your piece. Not necessarily change the thing because articles that have no contractions in them sound forced and too formal. Just break up contractions when editing and you are sure to find more errors than you thought you made in the first place.
Alright, so following that brilliant advice (don’t contradict), let’s read the sample sentence without using contractions.
“Yes, Maggie, I know that the people who visited the place was not you are kind of people.” Now you notice how weird it sounds.
I can go on and on.
“A snake sheds it’s skin every month or so” might sound correct but when you break up the contractions in the sentence it would be this, “A snake sheds it is skin every month or so.”
Now. Let see if you can find the common errors in the following sentence.
“Its they’re duty to protect and honor the flag.”
Good luck!
Ink Drips 