Spelling Conventions

Irregular verbs and Concatenatives

Do not mark irregular verb forms or concatenatives (i.e., does or gonna) as verb inflections.

Bound Morphemes

Use /s for regular plural inflections, e.g., sock/s, /z for possession, e.g., boy/z, /3s for third person singular, e.g., run/3s, and /ed for past tense, e.g., jump/ed. Use /ing to indicate present progressive, e.g., chase/ing, but do not use /ing for participles or predicate adjectives. Separate verb stems from the contractions. Use /n't or /'t for contracted negatives, e.g., would/n't and can/'t, but do not slash won't, don't, ain't and let's.

Apostrophes

Do not use an apostrophe at the beginning of a word. For example, if the speaker says 'cuz instead of "because", type out the full word because. If ya is used instead of "you", type you.

Proper Names and Titles

Enter proper names or titles as a single linked word, e.g., "Little Red Riding Hood" should be transcribed as Little_Red_Riding_Hood and "Grandma Jones" should be Grandma_Jones.

Abbreviations and Hyphenated Words

Abbreviated words should either be spelled out or left as an abbreviation but WITHOUT the period, e.g., "Mr." is transcribed as Mister or Mr. Remember, periods may only be used to mark the end of an utterance. The hyphen is not a legal word character. So words that would normally be hyphenated should be entered without the hyphen, e.g., "ex-wife" becomes exwife.

Numbers

You may enter numbers in written form and without hyphens, or as digits, e.g., 21 or twentyone.

Unusual Spellings

Since each word with even a slightly different spelling appears as a different word in the analyses, it is important to follow some standard spelling procedures to ensure consistency within and between transcripts. Here are recommended spellings for some of the more unusual words: