How should filler words and stutters be treated in the final transcript?

• A. Always remove all filler words and stutters.
• B. Always preserve every utterance exactly as spoken with no edits.
• C. Ignore and not mention them.
• D. Follow the court's style guide; typically decide whether to preserve or clean up for readability while preserving authenticity as required.

Answer: (D)

In final transcripts, handling filler words and stutters is about balancing readability with fidelity to what was said, guided by the court's style guide. The best approach is to follow that guide, which tells you whether to preserve or clean up for readability and how to indicate hesitations while preserving authenticity as required. This ensures consistency across transcripts and compliance with official rules.

Why this works: some proceedings want a verbatim record that captures every utterance, while others allow cleaning up for readability as long as the core content and authenticity are maintained. The style guide provides the rules for when to preserve or omit fillers and how to annotate stutters or hesitations so the transcript remains trustworthy and usable.

The other options fall short because removing all filler words can erase important aspects of how testimony was delivered, preserving every utterance verbatim can make the document hard to read, and ignoring them altogether loses a record of speech. Following the style guide gives the right balance for the specific context.