How do you handle reading from a document?

[Chelsea Adams]

One of my clients emailed me last week from the NCRA convention and said that Margie Wells claimed the best way to "quote" material being read aloud was this:

And he said, quote, (reading) Blah blah boring document words.

Does anyone else employ this method? As a proofer, I haven't seen it this way from any of my clients. I can see the merits -- you don't really know if they're reading it perfectly verbatim from the document -- though it can get a little clunky, in my opinion.

Thoughts?

[Quyen]

IMHO, I'm not there to characterize/document their actions/gestures -- reading, laughing, coughing, crying, sneezing, picking their nose, etc. -- unless such action(s) prevented me from hearing something that was said, in which case I will so indicate in the transcript, and then clarify what I couldn't hear.  I'm there to take down WORDS.  If I don't have the document/exhibit from which they read to be able to accurately quote what was read, then the word "quote" suffices.  Sometimes they don't even say "unquote," in which case I use no open or close quotations marks.

In answer to your question, this is a case of style preference, I guess. I've never seen it either, and I think it's unnecessary to put "(reading)" in there.  As a style, I personally don't like it and have never (and would never) do it that way. Then again, I don't punctuate/stylize according to Margie. I adhere strictly (99.99%) to Gregg's.

[Chelsea Adams]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm with you that this feels a bit extraneous. Someone on a different board said it was taking verbatim "where verbatim should never go," and I felt it was very apt.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

No, I don't do that.  I do:

Q  You see it says in the last paragraph: 

               "A full description of the

               business and technical operations

              that each of the servers/nodes/computers

              identified in response to Topic 2A are used

              to conduct or support the technology"?

Hard to show here, but I put it into a parenthetical if it's over seven words.  You get way more pages when they read a lot from documents.  

[Chelsea Adams]

Yeah, to me this is so much clearer than the (reading) thing. Thanks for your input!

[Lindsay Pinkham]

I do it like Kelly.  I always try to get the document and look at the punctuation, because sometimes the way they read it's hard to tell when one sentence ends.  I write exactly what they say, and if they read it inaccurately (and they almost always do), at the end of the double-indented part I put [as read].  If the question begins with the quote, I do put (Reading), then the double-indented part with quotes, then go into regular paragraphing for the rest of the question.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

Lindsay, I do the same thing.  Looks nicer in the transcript too.

[Heidi J. Ryder]

Yup, any material read from a doc is set off with quotes and readback indented format

[Kellie Zollars]

I love this, though I imagine it would make things difficult for a proofreader.   If they don't say the word quote, I put A. (Reading) The patient had...   It really helps me when I don't have the document and can't compare what was read to what the document has on it. 
I haven't indented as Kelli shows in her example in a very long time.  I do, however, indent when they read from a transcript.  

  

[D Sanders, RDR, CRR]

i put [as read] at the end of a quote if it's not verbatim.  however, I do like the indent thing too.