General Transcription Speed and Accuracy

Excellent command of the English language, grammar, spelling, and punctuation are important skills that are required for general transcription work.

You must type correctly what you hear! A transcript needs to match the dictation and have correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. If your grammar or punctuation needs improvement, you should take a course.

There is not much room for error. Most companies expect 98% error-free transcripts. This means there should be 2% or less errors. While many transcription companies use editors to verify their transcriptionists’ work, you won’t keep your transcription job very long if they find more than 2% errors.

Watch out for sound-alikes and common grammatical errors like it’s and its; there vs they’re; you're and your; for and four; their, they're and there. Those words are pronounced the same, are all spelled correctly but have different meanings. A SpellChecker won’t know if you mistakenly typed “their” instead of “they’re” or there because all three words exists. That’s why you cannot rely solely on a SpellChecker and need to proofread transcripts before submitting them.

Verbatim transcription requires transcriptionists to transcribe exactly as dictated word for work while semi-verbatim transcription lets the transcriptionist correct punctuation, misspellings and dictation errors at their discretion.

Features such as autocomplete and autoreplace will speed up typing and prevent or correct typing errors.

Focus on typing without errors. An accurate transcript is more important than transcription speed.

Find out more about transcription work from home here.