Interruptions, Pauses, Stutters, and Breaks: Transcribing them the Parrot way

Updated: 09/11/24

Speakers rarely speak in perfect sentences; they will change what they are saying halfway through, talk over each other, or cut off other speakers. 

At Parrot, we use double dashes, or em dashes (--)  to indicate interruption within a transcript. This helps differentiate it from hyphenated words and makes it quite clear that the speech is cutting off. We ALWAYS indicate interruptions whether a speaker interrupts themself, or is cut off by somebody else.

Self-Interruption 

Here's an example of how to indicate someone interrupting their own sentence: 

Here’s an example of how to use double dashes when there are filler words after:

Interruption by other speakers (<crosstalk>)

Often, speakers will cut other speakers off. Here's an example: 

Here, the speakers continue to talk over each other and the speakers are indiscernible for a short time: 

Longer Pauses

If a speaker pauses for more than 5 seconds, you can use ellipses to indicate this longer pause. For example: 

Stutters

When part of a word is repeated and the same word continues after, then we note this with em dashes. This is called a stutter. All stutters must be included in a Full Verbatim transcript. Proper nouns will always keep their first capital letter whilst non-proper nouns at the beginning of a sentence will not. When transcribing a stutter in full verbatim, it's important to accurately capture the speaker's exact words, including any repetitions of the initial sound, syllable, or word caused by the stutter. This helps to maintain the integrity of the spoken content and provide a true representation of the dialogue.

Initial sound and syllable:

Word repetition:

If a speaker stutters over a number, please spell it out for readability purposes: