Secretary

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The Various Forms of Dictation

Going back a few decades to the days of typewriters, typing pools and telex machines, dictation was often undertaken in the form of shorthand or perhaps even Speedwriting. Nowadays, this would be viewed as an inefficient use of valuable staff time as both the manager and their secretary are engaged in one task, whereas one of them could be getting on with something else – probably filing, and not necessarily their nails.

An alternative is dictation on to tape. The manager has a small Dictaphone at their disposal, day or night, for use wherever they happen to be, although dictating whilst driving down the M1 with the roof down is not recommended. The tapes come in various sizes: Micro, Mini or Compact Cassette, the latter probably more familiar to us older folk as the one used for recording the Top 20 off the radio. The tapes are then passed to the typist for a quick turnaround of work. We use an Olympus transcription machine, which takes the Micro Cassette format and works with any manufacturer’s Micro Cassette tapes. We can also transcribe from a Compact Cassette, but this would take longer, and we have even transcribed material from DVD for clients. (Our Services)

Although dictation using audio tape is still widely used, the new format of digital transcription is becoming more popular due to its extreme versatility. The danger of tapes becoming mangled or accidentally wiped (how many of us have done that) is now a thing of the past, as the finished dictation is transferred directly on to the computer to be picked up by the typist in the room next door or sent anywhere in the world. Digital formats can be DSS, DSS Pro, WMA, MP3 and WAV/AIFF. We can transcribe any of these formats, although MP3 files, more commonly used for music, tend to be less popular because they can be blocked by Internet firewalls designed to stop music piracy. If this all sounds very expensive, it doesn’t have to be because your local Argos store stocks voice activation recorders at a very reasonable price – naturally, other retailers and on-line stockists are available.

Time-wise, for every minute of your dictation, you need to allow between four and six times as long for the typing, ie half an hour of speech would take between two and three hours to type up. It all depends not only on the quality of the recording equipment but whether those involved in interviews can restrain themselves from talking all at once or, even worse, whispering from a far corner of the room, which means a lot of ear strain for us typists. Transcription can be in the form of 'verbatim', which is a full transcription including all the ‘umms’ and ‘errs’, and possibly the odd nasty cough or sneeze. This takes longer than the alternative, 'intelligent verbatim', which does not include all of these distractions. We undertake both types of transcription for clients.

So, whether you are using the older style tape, or the new-fangled digital format, with our quick turnaround time, working to your timescales, the work will be back in your Inbox before you know it.