How Many Characters Per Line Is a Court Transcript Page? Michigan's 67‑Character Statute vs. the Page Reporters Actually Produce
The page the statute defines
MCL 600.2510 — part of the Revised Judicature Act of 1961 — fixes every dimension of the transcript page used to compute fees: 25 lines per page, 8.5" × 11" paper prepared for left-side binding, a left margin of 1‑3/8 inches, a right margin of 3/8 inch, and "typing shall be 10 letters to the inch." Do the arithmetic: 8.5" minus 1.75" of margins leaves a 6.75" text column, and at 10 characters per inch that is a 67-character line. Subsection (2) then gives the geometry its teeth: a page in the prescribed format "shall be counted, billed, and paid for a full page." The page isn't just a look — it's the billing unit. The SCAO Manual for Court Reporters and Recorders carries the same format into its transcript-format section and applies it to reporters "official, per diem, or freelance."
Notice when this was written: 1961. The statute describes a typewriter — physical margin stops, pica type at exactly 10 pitch. In that world, the page produced itself: you set the stops once and everything you typed was the statutory page.
The page reporters actually produce — measured
We measured fifteen certified transcripts from the public record — U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments, a federal bench trial taken by an official district-court reporter, federal agency hearings, Michigan Public Service Commission hearings by several different reporters, and Michigan depositions filed in federal dockets — at the glyph-coordinate level: the full character cells of each row from the left text margin to the wrap point, indents and spaces included, with character pitch verified from the type itself.
They ranged from 48 to 62 characters per line. Not one reached the statutory 67. Michigan reporters clustered around 56–58, the federal official reporter measured 60, and the Supreme Court's own certified transcripts were the narrowest of all at about 48. This matches independent measurements of Michigan circuit-court trial transcripts from appellate records, which run 53–55. The deviation is not a Michigan quirk or a corner-cutting fringe; it is the uniform practice of American court reporting, top to bottom.
Where the drift came from
No one decided to shrink the line. Four things happened over sixty years:
1. The federal judiciary defined a different page — 63 characters
The Judicial Conference's transcript format (Guide to Judiciary Policy, Vol. 6, Ch. 18) prescribes a wider binding margin than Michigan's statute, and says so in plain numbers:
"The letter character size is to be 10 letters to the inch. This provides for approximately 63 characters to each line." … "Typing is to begin on each page at the 1-3/4 inch left margin and continue to the 3/8 inch right margin." Guide to Judiciary Policy, Vol. 6, Ch. 18, §§ 18.9.1, 18.9.3
So the most influential transcript standard in the country is already four characters short of Michigan's 67 — deliberately, for binding room.
2. CAT software shipped one national default
Computer-aided transcription systems replaced typewriters in the 1980s and '90s, and with them the page stopped being statute arithmetic and became a firm template. The federal-flavored 1.75" left margin set the natural national ceiling of 63 characters, and each firm's template settled somewhere below it — one very common margin pair, 1.75" left and 1" right, yields 57. New reporters inherited whatever template their firm or software handed them, and nobody re-derived a 1961 statute's arithmetic. Today's scatter — our measurements found different widths from firm to firm and reporter to reporter, all inside the 48–62 band — is the fossil record of those inherited templates.
3. No correction signal ever arrived
Courts and agencies accept transcripts that look right — 25 numbered lines, Courier, a certificate — and nobody puts a ruler on margins. Fee disputes, when they happen, are about rates, not geometry. Even the SCAO Manual's own example pages are reduced-scale reproductions rather than true-size models, so a reporter calibrating by eye against the Manual never sees the 67-character signal. The statutory column exists only in the margin arithmetic, and for sixty years almost nobody did the arithmetic.
4. The drift is self-stabilizing
A narrower column wraps the same words onto more lines — roughly 10% more pages for a mid-band 57-character page than for the statutory one (we generated the same deposition both ways: 23 pages versus 21). Where billing is per page, the drift direction never inconveniences the people producing the pages, and buyers see an identical page from every vendor, so there is no anomaly for anyone to notice. That is how a standard decays: quietly, uniformly, and in the direction that nobody is motivated to question.
Why it matters — and for which work
The page format is a billing question only where the law sets the fee. Michigan's framework, stated factually: MCL 600.2510(2) makes the statutory-format page the unit "counted, billed, and paid"; MCL 600.2513 prohibits charging more than the fees allowed by law; MCL 600.2543 sets the per-page rates for court transcripts. For court-ordered, statutory-rate work, those provisions define both the price and the page it is measured in.
For contract work — depositions, EUOs, and other transcripts sold at rates the parties agree to — the parties are likewise free to agree on what a page is, and the market page (25 numbered lines, a text column in the 50s) is the standard product every firm in Michigan receives from every vendor. Transparency is the clean practice either way: a rate sheet that states the format its per-page charges are based on removes any ambiguity about what is being sold.
The practical takeaway for a working reporter is simply to know which page you're producing and which work you're producing it for — and, if the answer surprises you, that's a conversation for your professional association and your own counsel, not a reason to panic. The gap described here is as old as CAT software and as wide as the profession.
Primary sources
- MCL 600.2510 — the transcript page definition and payment unit; see also MCL 600.2513 and MCL 600.2543
- SCAO Manual for Court Reporters and Recorders — Section 5, Transcript Format
- Guide to Judiciary Policy, Vol. 6, Ch. 18 — Transcript Format (§§ 18.9.1–18.9.3)
- The fifteen measured transcripts are all public records: MPSC e-dockets, federal court filings, and supremecourt.gov
Common questions
How many characters per line is a court transcript?
In certified practice, 48–62 at 10-pitch Courier, varying by firm template. Michigan's statutory page computes to about 67 — wider than anything we measured in the wild.
What does MCL 600.2510 require?
25 lines on 8.5" × 11" paper, a 1-3/8" left margin, a 3/8" right margin, typing at 10 letters to the inch — and it makes a page in that format the unit that is counted, billed, and paid as a full page.
Why do transcripts run in the 50s instead of 67?
Firm templates built in the CAT-software era under the federal format's 1-3/4" binding margin (a 63-character ceiling), inherited by reporters for decades with no reason to re-derive the statute's arithmetic.
Does the difference change page counts?
Yes — the same transcript produces roughly 10% more pages on a 57-character page than on the statutory 67-character page (a test deposition ran 23 pages versus 21).
This guide reports statutes, published standards, and measurements for general information. It is not legal advice; how these provisions apply to any particular reporter's work is a question for a Michigan attorney.
Related guide: Michigan transcript format: what the SCAO Manual requires (and what reporters actually produce)