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Commas & Complicated Interview Questions

by Joanna Norman

If you transcribe qualitative interviews, you will often hear the interviewer combining several questions at once. This Norman Transcription Grammar Tip helps with transcribing those complicated interview questions.

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WHAT WAS SPOKEN

“what are the biggest challenges you’re facing at Harvey and Smith Clinic and what are the biggest challenges you face in serving your patients”

CORRECT TRANSCRIPTION

What are the biggest challenges you’re facing at Harvey and Smith Clinic, and what are the biggest challenges you face in serving your patients?

WHY

You should always have a comma before coordinating conjunctions that join two independent clauses. An independent clause has a subject and a verb. Two independent clauses make up two complete thoughts.

Remember FANBOYS for coordinating conjunctions:

For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.

DETAILED EXPLANATION

  • first independent clause is “what are the biggest challenges you’re facing at Harvey …”
  • second independent clause is “what are the biggest challenges you have in serving …”
  • each clause has a noun and a verb making it an independent clause
  • coordinating conjunction is the word “and”
  • comma goes BEFORE the coordinating conjunction

ALTERNATIVE TRANSCRIPTION

This would also be a correct transcription of what was said:

What are the biggest challenges you’re facing at Harvey and Smith Clinic? What are the biggest challenges you face in serving your patients?

In this transcription, I have omitted the word “and” and broken it into two separate sentences. In standard transcription, it is okay to omit some spoken words for the sake of readability. One of the companies I work with requires that sentences never begin with the word “and.” This would be a way to meet that requirement. Note: You would not be able to do this with strict verbatim transcription.

RESOURCES

For help identifying subjects and verbs in questions:

https://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/interrogative-sentence.html