To Quote or Not to Quote

[Kelly Farrell]

This subject has given me more grief over the years than I want to admit.

I am just wondering what the opinions are on quoting material from an exhibit, such as, a heading that someone reads. Do you-all quote those pieces of read material or not?

What about when a witness just speaks in a pattern of: I said -- So she said -- And then I said --

This subject is probably very specific to each individual transcript and a lot of times depends on the way in which the witness said something, but anyone who wants to share their opinions, I would love to hear when you use quotes and when you don't :)

Thanks,
Kelly

[Amanda Leigh]

Yeah, I put the P R O C E E D I N G S centered on line 1 of the text. Lines 2 and 3 I have my parenthetical reporter's note. This is where I stick the paren if they mark exhibits ahead of time, too. If vid, then the videographer's remarks, and any other statements next. Then I put the sworn blurb, and we're off to the races.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I like this, Amanda. I will copy this. Thank you! (also, your Reporter's Note is sounding better & better as I ponder it.)

[Amanda Leigh]

Yeah, that reporter's note set me somewhat free!! :)

[Jennie Ann]

I used to work with another reporter who had a reporter's note on the Contents page about the en/em dash.

I can't remember it verbatim today, but it was in brackets and went something like this:

[Nota Bene: The en/em dash does not signify an omission of testimony....]

That's all I can remember. I always liked that expression, "Nota Bene."

Here is its meaning: Meaning of "Nota Bene"

This reporter was a real old-school reporter. I learned a lot from him. Another term he used at the end of a court hearing, when the next court date was not determined, was "sine die."

He'd put this at the end of the transcript:

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to reconvene sine die.]

Again, from Wikipedia: Meaning of "sine die"

It's funny the things that I can still remember when I used to do legal stuff. :-)

[Stacy Tegner]

Thanks, Judy ~ I don't think paragraphing and indenting is padding either ~ it's compensation for looking and relooking and finding quotes in docs. I am definitely going to start paragraphing as per how you do it :)

In the transcript I just finished, I had all the docs, but the spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc (what's left:) was horrendous. Half the time the atty reading would correct it himself as he read (as far as wrong words), but I couldn't bring myself to put in all the errors from the quoted material in the transcript, but I felt it needed to be quoted because of how the depo went. I swear it felt like a third of it was quoted material ~ and it was over 300 pages long.

So thank you, Amanda, for the reporter's note suggestion. I put that in right at the beginning, with a little tweaking so it said:
(REPORTER'S NOTE: Quotation marks indicate as-read material, not necessarily the direct/exact quote from the document.)