On transcribing dialogue

 I stole this practice from someone. Mamet, I think. I invite you to steal it from me.

Anytime you run an audio interview, do at least a few minutes of the transcription yourself, by hand. 

Spoken language is a mess. Even the most articulate conversationalists constantly reset verbs, abandon sentences, staple one idea to the next, and interrupt themselves and everyone else.

And I know you know that. 

But there's a difference between knowing something in your brain and knowing it with your fingers. Transcribing real dialogue onto the page is time consuming and tedious. But if you care about communication, it is a discipline worth enduring and a lesson worth learning.