Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to my channel, Jennifer Marie Bio, where I teach you different ways that you can make money online working from home. So earlier this week, I created a poll asking you how exactly you found my channel and why you subscribe to my channel if you're one of my subscribers. And the majority of people said that they subscribe to my channel because they are interested in becoming a transcriptionist or improving their transcription skills. If you're a follower of my channel, you'll know that I have a lot of different videos on transcription jobs. Now every day I get dozens of different comments from people saying, why did I fail this transcription exam? And they have no idea how they keep failing these transcription exams and they leave these comments. But in these comments, there are so many different errors. So for me reading these comments, it's obvious that of course they're not going to pass these transcription exams because they're making errors in grammar, punctuation, capitalization. And in order to pass these exams, you have to have almost a perfect score. You cannot have any major errors, punctuation errors, grammar errors using too many spaces. So I decided to go over all the different comments that I see on a daily basis and do a video about the seven most common errors that are keeping you from passing your transcription exam. I'm likely to do more videos in this series because I think this is just so important, especially since so many people are having troubles passing these exams. And a lot of these are really simple, easy errors that you can avoid doing if you just know the correct way to do it. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to my channel for more videos just like this one by clicking on the subscribe button below. And also make sure to check out my Sparkle English channel where I help you improve your level of English, improve your English writing skills, your punctuation skills and more. So let's get into the video. Okay, so the first mistake I see all the time in the comment section of my videos is the usage of spaces. People either use too many spaces in sentences or not enough spaces. And this is very important when you're transcribing. You cannot use more than one space, and you have to use spaces correctly. And if you make this mistake, you will definitely not be passing the transcription exams. So here are the rules of when to use and how to use spaces. Use one space following periods, commas, semicolons, colons, exclamation points, question marks and quotation marks. So for example, my name is Jennifer, one space. Your name is Carl. Do you want to see a movie tomorrow? One space, I have the night off. My favorite food is pizza, semicolon, one space. His favorite food is spaghetti. Have you finished the reports yet? One space, Roger asked. So a lot of times people will put two spaces or they won't put a space between it. Or what they'll do is they'll put a space between the last letter of the word and the period. I see this all the time. Someone will say, Hello, and then they leave a space and then they put a period and then they put another space and they ask their question. You have to put the punctuation mark directly after the last letter of the word. Maybe this is obvious for people who are native English speakers, and maybe not so much for people who speak other languages. And the other rule is that you use no spaces on either side of a hyphen. So for example, I have 22 projects to work on this month. You can see here that if you were writing out the word 22, let's say you weren't writing 22. For example, you would put a hyphen between 20 and two and you you do not use a space. Okay, the hyphen connects the two words. So you don't put a space there. I have a whole video on hyphen rules on my Sparkle English channel, which you can check out in the description of this video. The next one, my uncle was born in 1953. Now this is just an example using numbers. I know in most transcription platforms, you have to write it out like this or like this. This is just an example of how to use a hyphen that you would not use a space on either side of a hyphen. Okay. So let's say for example, you transcribed something that said she was a well known actress, you would not put a space on either side of the hyphen. Okay. So if you want to learn more about hyphens, you can look in the description below and I will link you to my hyphen rules video. Okay, so let's do some quick practice. Look at these sentences. Are you working tomorrow? This is incorrect, because we have a space here. Between the W and the question mark, there should be no space, it should be connected like this directly connected. We need to talk something happened last night. This is something I see all the time, don't put a space here, you have to have the period right after talk, talk, and then the period, I got 98% on the test, again, with percentages, no space, the percentage has to go directly beside this, okay, beside the eight. This is something other people I see doing, they put a space before the period or the punctuation mark, and then they directly begin their next sentence. No, you cannot do this. Okay, no space here. I am exhausted. I only slept for five hours last night. Again, the exclamation mark has to go directly after the last letter of the word. Lawrence read 33 books last year. Again, we do not use spaces on either side of a hyphen. Okay, so you'd have to write it like this. Claudia was born in 1989. Here you would have to put a hyphen between 80 and nine. Okay, the next few errors we're going to talk about are all commonly confused words. So homophones in English are pairs of words that sound the same, but have distinctly different meanings and different spellings. Now there is a huge list of different homophones. These are only some of them. There are so many in English. And what makes this difficult is, let's say you're transcribing and you hear a word like it's or it's there, there, there, you're, you're, affect, affect, then, then, to, to, to, here, here, no, no, new, new, which, which, right, right, lose, loose, through, through, let's, let's, advice, advise, where, where, week, week, one, one, piece, piece, bye, bye, bye, site, site, you can see they all sound almost exactly the same. And this is so difficult for English speakers to write them correctly. And I have many friends who are native English speakers who spell a lot of these wrong all the time. So this is so important when you're transcribing, especially if you're using one of those automatic transcription softwares to help you like otter.ai or something like that, you will have to make corrections because you know, a computer doesn't necessarily know if you're trying to say one or the other sometimes. Now on my Sparkle English channel, the majority of these I have special little videos dedicated to each one with in depth help on how to know the difference between when to write affect or affect, for example. But I'm going to talk about the most important ones, the ones I see all the time, written incorrectly, right now. They're there and there. So there, they apostrophe re means they are, for example, they're going to Paris next week. This means they are going to Paris next week. Their T H E I R is a possessive adjective. For example, their house is beautiful, the house that belongs to them. Their T H E R E is the opposite of here. It means at that place. For example, I am going there tomorrow. You might be talking about the restaurant or the school I am going to that place tomorrow. There are three boys in my class. So the next common error is the difference between its and its. I see this one all the time. Its I T S without an apostrophe is a possessive adjective. For example, the dog's fur is white. Its fur is white. You could not write its fur is white because that would mean it is fur is white. And that does not make any sense. Okay. The next one is its I T apostrophe S. And this means it is. It could also mean it has depending on the sentence, okay. So for example, it's raining, it is raining. It's a beautiful day. It is a beautiful day. If you had this sentence, it's been a tough year, that would mean it has been a tough year. Okay, the next one common error for your or your. Your is a possessive adjective. For example, your name is Serena. Your hair is so long. Is that your bike? So your means whatever belongs to you. But your Y O U apostrophe R E equals you are you're not invited to the party, which means you are not invited to the party. You're going to love this movie. You're beautiful. Okay. Common error five, to, to and to. To is a preposition of movement. We are going to work on Saturday. I love to play football. To T O O means excessive or also. For example, he ate too much pizza. I saw that movie too. Okay. So in this one, it means that the person ate more pizza than they should have. It made them full, for example. And in the second one, it means I also saw that movie. I saw that movie too. And to T W O is the easiest one. It's the number two, one, two. She has two jobs. The infant is two years old. Okay, common error six, capitalization of the word I this one, I can't believe how often I see this one. The word I must always be capitalized. I see a lot of people in the comment section of my video asking me why they failed and I see them using the word I without capitalizing it like five times in their comment. You always have to capitalize the word I not only when it's the first word in a sentence. So for example, I am in a great mood. Yes, you capitalize I, of course you capitalize the beginning of any sentence. But this next example, Jason loves eating sushi, but I prefer pasta. It's in the middle of the sentence, you still capitalize it, you always have to capitalize the word I always, always, always. The next one, this is Joe and I'm Stacy. I'm which means I am also capitalize it. He's never been to Paris, but I've been there twice. Again, capitalize I. I have a great video on capitalization rules and my Sparkle English channel that covers everything you need to know about capitalization. And this is so important when you're transcribing, because again, you need to know how to capitalize things properly, names to the year, there are so many different capitalization rules. So you can check out that video by going to the description below. But now let's look at common error six, incorrect capitalization of titles. This is another big one. And what happens is, if you are using something like otter.ai to transcribe or help you transcribe or an automatic audio to text converter, they might transcribe the words correctly, but not the capitalization of the title, okay, because titles have different capitalization rules. So let's look at this, for example, the Lord of the Rings, this is correct. You can see we capitalize the Lord and rings. But the second one where everything is capitalized every word in the title, this is incorrect. Another example here, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, that's correct. But you wouldn't capitalize every word. And I want to tell you quickly why that is. So the rules for capitalization in titles of articles, books, speeches, and other documents can vary according to which particular style guide. So we have the Associated Press style book, the Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA handbook. But they all follow pretty basic rules, which I'm going to teach you next. Rule number one, capitalize the first and last word of the title. So you always have to capitalize the first and last word of the title no matter what example, Mission Impossible. Rule two, capitalize nouns and pronouns. So a lion is a noun. So we would capitalize that the Lion King. Three, capitalize verbs and helping verbs. So the title can't buy me love, it's also a movie and also a song. By is a verb, we'd capitalize that. And earlier we said capitalize nouns and pronouns. You can see we've capitalized the pronoun me as well. Rule four, capitalize adjectives and adverbs. For example, a beautiful mind, beautiful is an adjective. So we capitalize that five. Now in this rule, we do not capitalize short prepositions, which are fewer than three letters. So for example, the Wizard of Oz, this is fewer than three letters. So we don't capitalize that preposition, we only capitalize the Wizard and Oz. Six, don't capitalize articles. Now this is a good example. Because look, we do not capitalize of, because it's a preposition fewer than three letters. And we don't capitalize the. And you might say, well, why? Because we capitalize this the, well, we only capitalize the first the, because it's the first word in a title. Okay, so you always capitalize it no matter what. But the second the is just a normal article. We can't capitalize articles, like a, an, the, unless it's at the beginning of the title, the first word or the last word. And rule seven, don't capitalize short coordinating conjunctions, and, but, or, for, or nor. So for example, Hansel and Gretel, we do not capitalize and, because it's a short coordinating conjunction. Now, I know this is quite crazy. There's a lot of different rules. So I want to show you a cool little website that I think is great for you guys. I'm going to show you now. If you go to title case converter, this is a free smart capitalization tool. So you can literally type in the title, the Lord of the Rings, press convert, and it will capitalize it correctly for you. So this is an excellent tool to use. Okay, finally, common error seven, plurals and apostrophes. A very common error is mixing up possessive and plural forms. So I saw this one very recently, on one of the comments, I transcribed the videos correctly. So the person was trying to say videos, like one video, two videos. But when you're talking about more than one of a noun or more than one of an item, you just put an s at the end, you don't put an apostrophe s. An apostrophe s means possession, something belonging to a video. So that wouldn't make sense. You have to write I transcribed the videos correctly. This is the correct, the plural form of video. Now let's look at when we would use an apostrophe s. I have two sisters, again, this is incorrect. I have two sisters, we're talking about one sister, two sisters. Now when would you use sisters? Because you would use that sometimes. Well, here's an example. My older sister's hair is curly. We would use apostrophe s because we're talking about the hair that belongs to the sister. And if you said my older sister's hair is curly like this, that would be incorrect because you need to use an apostrophe. I also have a video on in depth apostrophe rules, which I will link to in the description below as well. But this is just the basic example of a common error that I see a lot. Okay, so that was a lot of information. And I'm sure a little bit confusing for you all. So I'm sure once you do this practice, you'll see that you have learned more than you realize. So I want you to tell me if these sentences are correct or they're incorrect. And some of them may have even more than one error. So let's I want you to stop the video or pause it and write down your answers, or save this and do it later. But I do think this is an excellent exercise for you. Number one, they're going shopping tomorrow evening. Number two, I have too many friends, it's impossible to keep in touch with everyone. Number three, she likes tea, but I like coffee. Number four, I have a great relationship with my father in law. Number five, my favorite movie is NF Green Gables. Number six, my dad has so many awesome records. Number seven, my brother's best friend is Andrew. Okay, so look at number one, they're going shopping tomorrow evening. This one has two errors. The first error is there. We want to say they are going shopping tomorrow evening. So we want to write they're going shopping tomorrow evening. And the second error, maybe you didn't notice or maybe you did is the space, okay, we don't want a space here, we want to put the period right after evening. Number two, I have too many friends. Here, we want to write T-O-O, not T-O, because we're saying too many, an excess amount. It's impossible to keep in touch with everyone. This we have to change to it's. It is impossible to keep in touch with everyone. Number three also has two errors. She likes tea. Here we want the comment to go directly after the A, but I like coffee. And the I has to be capitalized because we always capitalize I. Number four, I have a great relationship with my father in law. Here we want to add a hyphen after father and in law. Okay. Number five, my favorite movie is NF Green Gables. NF Green Gables is a title. So we want to capitalize the G for green, because it's an adjective, and G for Gables because it's a noun. And it's the last word in the title. And of we do not capitalize because it's a preposition, and it has fewer than three letters. Number six, my dad has so many awesome records. For this one, we are talking about multiple records. So we want to write records like this, and we don't want the apostrophe because we're talking about the plural form of record. And the last one, my brother's best friend is Andrew. Now this one is correct. It's the only one that's correct, because we're, we're using the possessive, the best friend of my brother, my brother's best friend is Andrew. So we want to we're not talking about two brothers. We're talking about his best friend, my brother's best friend. So we use apostrophe s to show the possessive. Okay, so I want you to let me know how many you got correct out of seven. And I quickly want to bring you over here to grammarly.com. Now grammarly.com is a free spelling and punctuation checker. They have both a free version and a premium version, but I'm going to demonstrate this to you using the free version. You can get Grammarly by clicking on the link in the description below. And I've just pasted all of the ones we had on our practice test. And you can see that Grammarly has done a great job of finding the majority of these errors. You can see here and you just have to click on it and it's highlighted in red the error. Here they're even recognizing that we have too many spaces. And so really in here again with the spaces and the capitalization of I and also the correct plural form of records. So really the only thing that they are not catching is the fact that we need to put in hyphens between father-in-law and then also here the title Anne of Green Gables. And that's why it's so important to know the correct way to capitalize titles because even you know, punctuation checkers like Grammarly can't tell automatically that it's supposed to be a title. Now I know they're saying here that there's some errors here. These are not errors. It's just a word choice basically. So I definitely recommend you sign up to Grammarly using the link in the description below. And even if you can't afford the premium version, I have just done this with the free version and you can see it has helped me out greatly. So combining a punctuation checker like this with learning the rules like capitalization rules and hyphen rules, you really are going to be able to produce better transcripts. Okay everyone that wraps up my video for the seven most common errors that I see that I think are preventing you from passing your transcription exams. If you like this video, please click like, make sure to subscribe to my channel. And if you would like more videos in this series on common transcription errors, make sure to let me know in the comment section and also about any other transcription questions you have and I will try to address them in my next videos. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.