Polish Your Transcript

Step 6: Polish Your Transcript

Now you’ll need to read through your interview with three goals:

1. Separating big blurbs of text into smaller chunks
2. Correcting typos
3. Locating timestamps

Separating Text

• If you encounter an especially large cell of text, you can create a new row below that cell and separate the text into two parts

• To separate a cell like this:

• Select the row so it’s highlighted in blue

• Right click on that row and select Insert 1 below

• Insert the speaker’s initials into the new speaker cell

• Select and copy half the text from the original words cell, and paste it below into the cell you just created (make sure to also delete the text you just pasted from its original cell)

• Finished, your split cell should look like this:

Correcting Typos

Google Sheets includes a spell checker to help you find misspellings.

• Use the spell check feature by going to the Tools menu and selecting Spelling > Spell check
• After you’ve corrected any misspellings, give the transcript a quick read to make sure there are no obvious typos or mistakes.
• You will be analyzing the transcript for subject matter in the next section, so you will have time to further check your transcript then.

Locating and Moving Timestamps

• Timestamps may be located periodically throughout the interview at the end of the text in the words cells, or perhaps on their own line:

• These need to be moved to the timestamp column

• When you come across a timestamp:

  • Change the datatype of the timestamp column to “Duration”:

    • To do this, select the entire timestamp column, so it’s highlighted. Then, in the Google Sheets menu select Format > Number > Duration

  • Copy and paste the timestamp you found into that row’s timestamp cell

  • Surround the timestamp with brackets. If it’s currently surrounded by parentheses, replace the parentheses (()) with brackets ([])

  • Put it into the format [HH:MM:SS] where H = hour, M = minute, and S = second

    • Example: (7:55) should become [00:07:55]