New CastingWords style guide is live!

Discussion in 'CastingWords' started by naturegirl, Dec 22, 2012.

  1. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Hey, everyone,

    Defying my expectations, CastingWords has put the revamped style guide up in record time. This is not a bad thing. :)

    It is not fully linked yet in all HITs, but you can check it out here.

    A few style changes have been made, so CastingWords is recommending a careful reading, even if you have been working with them for a while, and especially if you've been working with them for a long while!

    ETA: Will have some commentary on my blog about this, but since I'm changing hosts today, not yet. :)
     
    #1 naturegirl, Dec 22, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 22, 2012
  2. Chytay

    Chytay User

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    Glad they gave us a better guide. It's been needed for a long time.
     
  3. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Agreed, Chytay. To their credit, they were very invested in making it the best guide that it could be. The Community Manager spent quite a bit of time discussing and debating style points with me as I was working on the revamp. They apparently knew full well that a better one was in order!
     
  4. ewd76

    ewd76 User

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    Thanks for this. I am still trying to get my mind ready to start doing transcriptions. Not there yet though.
     
  5. srdress

    srdress User

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    Hm, I might have to give CastingWords another look. Thanks!
     
  6. Maggiemw

    Maggiemw User

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    Castingwords are great to work with, no doubt about it. Good job on the the New Style Guide, Naturegirl and CW! I've gone through it carefully and I like it. It's very, very, very clear.

    What I can say to anyone about to start transcribing for CW: don't just read the guide. Study EVERY SINGLE element in the sample transcript. Absolutely everything in there is there for a reason...
     
  7. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    You're welcome, ewd76 and srdress! And I hope you do try them again, srdress. Keep us posted!

    Hee, that's OK. You do seem to be working on it, and good for you. There's no rush, at least not as far as I know. Transcription will be around for some time to come, on Turk.

    Maggiemw, I am totally delighted to hear that you like the revised one! I could love the formatting job more (I believe they're still tweaking it), but I feel like it covers things thoroughly.

    And everyone, I second maggiemw's comments that everything in the Style Guide is in there for a reason. The Sample Transcript that goes along with it was written with that principle tightly in mind, too.
     
  8. zinni

    zinni User

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    I like the fact that we can label speakers with Interviewer and such instead of just Man and Woman and all that. I was already labeling my rough transcripts with I: and R: (for Interviewer and Respondent) and then changing it back to Man and Woman type labels.

    Any idea how they'd feel about using Respondent instead of just Interviewee? I'll do it whichever way. It just seems like seeing Interviewer and Interviewee would make proofreading a teeny bit harder than if we were using two words that weren't so similar.
     
  9. ayeembored

    ayeembored Active Member

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    Yes. Brava! And I like that it's spelled out that if you don't know the speaker's last name but DO know the first name that the first name is good enough. The old guide wasn't clear on that and people would use Man 1 for someone just identified as, say, Dave.

    Also, I like the change, or clarification on people with professional titles, i.e., use "Pastor So and So" instead of just "So and so" as the label.

    I, too, like the idea of using "Respondent" or "Subject" instead of "Interviewee." It seems a bit easier to read.

    Oh, ran into this one a bit earlier. Does CW prefer "tee shirt" or "t-shirt"?
     
  10. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Sorry it's taken me a while to respond...I've been slammed with holiday and family and guest stuff. :) But thanks for your comments! I'm really glad you guys think the new version is an improvement.

    I agree that the I-and-I thing makes proofreading harder! However, they were definitely wanting more precision, not less, in speaker labels, and parallelism was something they seemed to appreciate, too. Although "Respondent" might stand out more in proofing, it's actually less precise (a panelist could be a respondent, or a single presenter could be a respondent if being asked a question by an audience member). So I believe they'd prefer "Interviewee" anyway. I'll ask them, though, and will mention "Subject" too.

    Right! That was part of the goal, to prevent transcribers from having many reasons to default to Man 1 or Woman 1. And using a title when you know it always adds more specificity.

    They prefer "t-shirt." :)
     
  11. ewd76

    ewd76 User

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    I started to try 2 of them. Both had speakers whose foreign accents were so bad you could hardly tell they were speaking English. I returned both.
     
  12. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Here's something I had hoped to see changed in the style guide revision:

    :-/

    Another favorite:

    The "too formal" explanation doesn't make sense to me. (My occasional uses of semicolons are not "too formal" IMSVHO.) ... Still, 'tis perhaps best to avoid semicolons (and em-dashes) entirely, lest a grader frown upon thee?
     
    #12 hapless, Dec 31, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 31, 2012
  13. ayeembored

    ayeembored Active Member

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    Thank you very much. It's what I went with, but I wasn't completely sure. Wasn't it in the list of word preferences in the old style guide? (and if it's in the example transcript, 50 lashes with a wet noodle for me.)

    I think I know which clips you're talking about. There's a large backlog of pretty bad audio out there, but I was able to work all day without much trouble in the expresses. When there's this many hits, it's a lot easier to sort through them on turkers.castingwords.com.
     
    #13 ayeembored, Jan 1, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2013
  14. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Hi, guys,

    At long last, I have the answer regarding "Subject" or "Respondent" vs. "Interviewee." (That delay is mostly my fault: CW got back to me within a day or two, but I was handling some family stuff and didn't have time to get back here.)

    They prefer "Interviewee." Sorry about that. I made the case for the other two, but no dice.

    Hapless, based on your posts elsewhere in the forum, I don't know if it still matters to you, but yeah, I agree with you for the most part about semicolons. Then again, they do add a level to the writing/transcription that makes it require a bit more thinking for a reader to digest, and I think that's the issue for CW: they started out as a podcast transcription company, so they still have the mindset that if the audience has to think about the caption (that's all they used to do) they're seeing, it's a bad thing.

    About double dashes, I agree completely. :) But...since I was doing work for hire for the company, I figured it would be a lot easier to focus my energy and theirs on fixing anything I could say was confusing for Turkers because it was inconsistently or imprecisely explained. It seemed a much tougher row to hoe to tell the company that they completely misunderstand a grammar point altogether, lol. So I didn't take any stand on that, because at least they are very clear on how they want that double dash used!

    And ewd, it's always smart to return something if you feel that iffy about understanding it! But yeah, understanding accents better is definitely a skill that can be learned.
     
    #14 naturegirl, Jan 10, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 10, 2013
  15. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    About to be added to the style guide, per a convo I had with CW this morning:

    Only use a single space between sentences and after speaker labels. Never use double spaces anywhere in CastingWords' transcripts unless a customer specifically requests that.
     
  16. ayeembored

    ayeembored Active Member

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    Thank you! It's never been stated anywhere. I learned that the "two spaces after end punctuation" rule is now outdated when I went back to college and got marked down on a paper for it. I was told that the reason is that fonts take readability into consideration in their design so now only one space is necessary. THAT was a hard trick to reteach this old dog.
     
  17. Dreamtime312

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    Castingwords Style Guide

    Ah, Amy, as always -- you are a gem. I loved your book, too. Keep up the good fight!
     
  18. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Glad I could help, Dreamtime. I don't know whether I'd describe it as a fight, but I enjoy helping keep things spelled out. Less trouble for everyone in the long run.

    Heh. You're welcome. You know what's funny? CW wanted to add details of exactly what you just said into the SG as well. I said it would be better to keep it simple for the official doc. But I agree it's interesting to know!
     

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