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I'm transcribing a webinar for work and I need to get the punctuations right for this. How do I punctuate dialogue when the speaker repeats words in a row whilst wondering out loud? For example, in the following:

"I have read every single question and recent hundreds thousands  hundreds of tips to help students use these questions effectively" 

How do I go about punctuating the 'hundreds thousands hundreds' bit? I always find it really hard to punctuate spoken English, as it's obviously not always grammatically ideal anyway, but for someone who already has a poor grasp of grammar it can be really tough, especially considering how hard it is to find advice on dialogue grammar!

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  • Do you want to do and accurate transcript? Often the language is tidied up and errors removed.
    – S. Mitchell
    Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 15:39

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Usually, when people repeat things or misspeak in speeches, you can do something like this:

"I have read every single question and recent hundreds, thousands - hundreds of tips to help students use these questions effectively."

Where you break it up with a little dash to show a pause in the speaker's thinking. You could also use periods (...) for this purpose.

Alternatively, you can use the time-honored newspaper trick and use [sic] to indicate the speaker misspoke.

"I have read every single question and recent hundreds thousands hundreds [sic] of tips to help students use these questions effectively."

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  • Brilliant! Thank you so much.
    – user47346
    Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 15:58
  • ive always wondered what [sic] meant
    – shieldgenerator7
    Commented Oct 24, 2020 at 0:46

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