Talk like that

During the summer after my freshman year of college I temped at a police station. The data entry job required putting information from police reports into the computer system. The bulk of the work was transcribing the dictated reports on miniature cassettes. I was filling in for a woman who was having carpal tunnel surgery, if that gives you any idea how much time I spent tapping away at the keyboard.

I got a lot of practice listening to these tapes and typing everything they said, even if some of it was pretty unintelligible since the detectives would often record their reports while eating. I pulled this old skill out of my bag of tricks today because I needed to transcribe the seventeen-minute interview I did with a film director last week. (The transcript is posted at the usual place if you're interested.)

What jumped out at me was listening--I mean really listening--to how he and I talk and how those words didn't always look right in print. Sentences drop off for no good reason or run on and on and on. "Just" and "kind of" are liberally sprinkled throughout the conversation despite the words not being intended to express exclusivity and partial commitment. Everything was perfectly understandable while we talked, but an unaltered transcript would, in some places, be slightly misleading to the reader, not to mention a bit ragged. Without hearing the inflection, "kind of" could denote something different than what was meant.

Is it no wonder then that people misunderstand each other all the time? Hearing or reading what gets said does not equate to comprehension or proper interpretation even when no attempts at deception are made. It seems so easy. These are the words, which have these meanings. Too often it isn't enough.