Oh, dictation. When I was in middle school, dictation was simply a silly outdated exercise that we did to practice our penmanship. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. I mean, who uses dictation anymore?
The 12 year-old me would never believe that dictation was usable job skill. However, the twenty-something version of me knows the truth. My daily regime nearly always includes greeting clients, logging packages, and listening to Mr. Burns, Esq. describe gruesome medical malpractice, using words like “debride” and “lesion.”
Shudder.
I know more about lesions than I EVER wanted to. Let’s just say that thanks to this job, I’ve become much more serious about healthy diet and lifestyle. Anything that prevents me from dying of ulcers on my hoo-ha is on my “to do” list these days.
I’ve transcribed so many letters and memos for Mr. Burns, Esq., that I’ve got a pretty good idea of how documents in high-falutin legalese is supposed to sound: crisp, precise and full of sanitized euphemisms like “The Incident”. Imagine my surprise when I did a dictation for Buddy, Esq., one of my favorite associates, that sounded like this:
“Also of note, there are many new aspects of this case of which I was previously unaware of, and many new lawyers are involved now as well, and I have not previously heard any of their names in any of the previous documents.”
Um...
Normally, memos and letters are anything but stream of consciousness style writing. They are well thought-out and planned down to the comma. But this gobbledy-gook sounded like the random thoughts that bounce around someone’s head. Someone who has an underdeveloped grasp of the English language at that.
Being the conscientious pseudo-secretary that I am, I typed it out verbatim. After all, maybe Buddy, Esq. wanted to see all of his thoughts, then edit them? I tried – really tried – not to compulsively edit every sentence.
But I couldn’t take it.
After slogging through nearly 90% of the document, adding commas and periods, I broke down and called him.
“Hey, Buddy, it’s Mishi. I have a question for you. Do you WANT me to type out the parts of this dictation that sound like...erm...you’re talking to yourself?”
Buddy, instead of getting upset at my cheek (he’s used to by now), gave me “creative license” to correct his grammar and improve his sentences.
“I’m not used to doing dictations,” he said, “which you can probably tell.”
Oh yeah, I could tell.
Once he gave me the O.K., I went through and made discrete changes. MANY discrete changes. That example sentence above was condensed to:
“Also of note, there are many new aspects of this case of which I was previously unaware, and many new lawyers.”
I mean, come on. The rest was obvious.
While cheerfully shortening sentences and removing words, I tried not to wonder too much about what law school did to Buddy’s English skills (or he had any to start with).
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