Transcript formatting conventions are barely documented anywhere — the usual advice is to hunt down an out-of-print style book. These guides answer one question at a time and pin every answer to primary sources: state manuals, statutes, court rules, and certified transcripts from the public record.
The famous 28-line California page comes from the Los Angeles Superior Court's own format manual, not state law. The statewide rule — 16 CCR § 2473, the Court Reporters Board's Minimum Transcript Format Standards — requires 25+ lines and 56+ characters per line, governs depositions (even in federal cases), and makes non-compliance a disciplinary matter. And California bills official transcripts per 100 words, not per page.
Florida · Page formatOne statewide rule covers Florida — Rule 2.535(f): 25 numbered lines, a 56-character minimum, 8½×11, and (unusually) Courier or Times New Roman, for every court and every deposition. It's also the most digital-friendly court-reporting rulebook in the country, with one firm exception — capital cases require a live stenographer. Every requirement quoted from the rule.
Indiana · Page formatSearchable PDF/A, 250-page and 50 MB caps, a mandatory file-naming convention, FAT-32 media — and a transcript-format rule with a malware clause. Indiana also has no characters-per-line figure (it lists fonts instead of a pitch) and makes reporters give back half a page of billing for every sidebar page break.
Maryland · Page formatA 65-character page, colloquy on the 11th space, exhibit references floated to the right of the page — and the strongest statement of reporter independence in any state manual. Also the only manual that makes you distinguish "inaudible" from "unintelligible," and one whose definitions assume a transcriber working from a recording.
Michigan · Page formatThe official 25-line page format from the SCAO Manual for Court Reporters and Recorders — margins, indents, title page, certificate — compared with the CAT-software layout (Case CATalyst, MAXScribe, Eclipse) working reporters actually deliver, and which to use for depositions vs. court transcripts.
New Jersey · Page formatThe narrowest transcript page in the country — exactly 55 characters, not a minimum — inside required vertical margin rules. Plus the indentation stair-step, strict verbatim by rule, the openings and voir dire that are excluded by default, and a certification form written for transcribers working from a recording.
New York · Page formatNew York defines its whole page in one rule: 25 numbered lines plus a title line, 10 characters per inch, a double-ruled 1-3/4" left margin, a 6-5/16" writing block (about 63 characters per line), exact Q&A and colloquy indents — and a page must carry at least 13 lines before it can even be billed. Every requirement quoted from the rule.
South Carolina · Page formatThe simplest indentation in the country — a single five-space tab does colloquy, paragraphs and everything else — paired with the only four-mark notation we've found for broken speech, which records whether a speaker was interrupted or stopped themselves. Plus a mandatory digital backup recording of every proceeding.
Texas · Page formatTexas puts its whole format in one manual with real teeth: 25 numbered double-spaced lines, 56–63 characters inside a mandatory drawn "format box," Q&A on the fifth space with wrapped lines returning to the margin — indents that are law, not house style. Plus the part most guides skip: Texas certifies only stenographic reporters, and uncertified reporting is a Class A misdemeanor. Every requirement quoted from the primary sources.
Wisconsin · Page formatThe shortest page spec in the country, written as ceilings rather than columns — cap the margins, cap the indents, at least 25 lines. Around it: digital audio recording permitted by supreme court rule, rough drafts named as a billable product, and the clearest sentence anywhere on what a transcript actually is.
True verbatim keeps every sound; clean (intelligent) verbatim keeps the words but drops the noise, without paraphrasing. And the part the generic guides get wrong: a certified court transcript is neither — it keeps every word, false starts and repetitions included, and drops only hesitation sounds. The three styles compared, with one sentence shown all three ways.
Verbatim conventions · FillersNo rule anywhere requires filler words — the federal transcript policy says verbal tics are "not normally included," and state manuals are silent. We counted fillers in 20+ certified transcripts (SCOTUS, federal trials, Michigan hearings and depositions) to show the real convention, the honest exceptions, and the one thing that must always stay: "uh-huh" answers.
Verbatim conventions · StuttersThe certified convention for repeated words is the interruption dash — we counted 650+ dash-marked repeats and zero hyphen-welds across certified SCOTUS, federal trial, and Michigan transcripts. Plus when a comma is right ("very, very"), and how in-word stutters ("e-enrolled") and spell-outs ("M-O-B-L-E-Y") keep their hyphens.
MCL 600.2510 defines the billable page — 25 lines, fixed margins, 10 characters per inch, about 67 per line. We measured fifteen certified transcripts from the public record: the field produces 48–62, nobody 67. Where sixty years of drift came from (the federal 63-character format, inherited firm templates) and which page belongs to which work.
All states · Page formatA judge charges the jury for five pages, or a witness answers for a full page — do you indent new paragraphs to break it up? Nine states publish a rule saying exactly where a new paragraph begins — though none requires you to make one — and they disagree by ten columns (New Jersey's sixth space to Michigan's fifteenth). The federal Guide says nothing at all. Plus what certified transcripts actually do: 83% of page-long narrative turns get broken, 96% of breaks land at a sentence boundary, and an unbroken turn is never a formatting error.
Courts hand you a folder of .trm files that won't open in any audio player. What FTR (For The Record) recordings actually are — the multichannel .trm audio, the .trs session files that declare the playback order, the clerk's .htm log — why one hearing produces dozens of files, how to play and export them with FTR's free player, and how to skip the conversion step entirely.
Digital (a.k.a. electronic) court reporting is the route into the field that skips the stenotype machine and years of steno school. The step-by-step path, the AAERT Certified Electronic Reporter credential now folded into CAPTUR, the notary requirement, how state rules differ, training options, and what BLS says it pays — each fact from the primary source.
Nothing matches that — try a state name or a topic like "verbatim."
More guides are on the way — clean verbatim vs. true verbatim, and more state-by-state format rules. Questions you'd like answered? Tell us.