Polishing: Sweetened Condensed Transcripts
Omit surplus words. Transform messy speech into clear writing with AI's 'Improve Writing' wand.
"Omit Surplus Words."
— Plain English for Lawyers
The harshest critique someone could make of this book is that it should have been an article. In a world where you can generate mountains of text with a few keystrokes, we must resist the temptation to be long-winded. Even before ChatGPT, many books could have been written as long-form essays. Many articles should have been blog posts. Many blog posts should have been tweets. And most tweets should have been... skipped.
Likewise, most hour-long conversation transcripts can be reduced by at least half, without losing any meaning once you remove filler words and rework rambling sentences. Only the most eloquent among us speak the same way we're taught to write—with complete sentences, concise logic, and impeccable grammar.
Most of us talk more, like, well—you know... less polished. And this is the thing. No one wants to read prose like this italicized paragraph. Sentence fragments. While you're speaking, a dangling modifier is introduced into the conversation.
There are better ways to convey the essential points than a 100% accurate, verbatim transcript.
Waving the Magic Wand
Prior to the release of AI tools, I had an effective system for refining rough podcast transcripts. It took about three hours to scrub the "ums" and "uhs" and pare down the fluff by hand. Now, with NotionAI's magical Improve writing wand, I can transform messy speech into clear writing in minutes. And the output is better than what I used to get when doing it the old-fashioned way.
Here's an example. I opened MacOS's native dictation software and started rambling:
All right so this is just me talking and you know the thing is when you're talking like this speaking out loud and your spit balling ideas trying to come up with sort of the core essence of what you want to say there is a challenge which is that your usual speech the way you talk to other people does Nova sound the same as if you were writing it out in advance writing an outline and then sitting down and editing it after the fact so you're gonna get a piece of transcript text that's not nearly as clear concise if you're just going to stream of consciousness
Now, let's wave our magic wand and Improve writing:
Okay, so this is just me talking and brainstorming ideas. One challenge I face is that my spoken words are often not as clear and concise as they would be if I had written them out in advance and edited them afterwards. When you speak spontaneously, it can be difficult to articulate your thoughts as effectively as you would in a written format. As a result, the transcript of this conversation may not be as polished as a carefully crafted piece of writing.
Better, but still a bit wordy. Let's Make it shorter:
When speaking spontaneously and brainstorming ideas, it can be challenging to capture the core essence of what you want to say. The resulting transcript may not be as clear and concise as a carefully planned and edited piece of writing.
Now we're talking. Or, rather, transcribing...
The Trade-Off
The downside of the magic wand is that it can be too aggressive in correction—making the words sound foreign to the person who spoke or wrote them.
Fix spelling & grammar takes a more cautious approach, preserving meaning despite leaving in some errors. Thus, you're faced with a trade-off:
Improve writing enhances clarity but may lose accuracy
Fix spelling & grammar retains accuracy but leaves in defects
When accuracy is more important, I will run both prompts on an entire transcript. I then create two or even three side-by-side columns on a Notion page, containing the original and each enhanced version. This allows me to compare one section at a time and incorporate the best aspects from all versions while ensuring that the prompts didn't alter the meaning of the speaker.
The Two-Column Method
| ORIGINAL | ENHANCED |
|----------|----------|
| All right so this is just me talking and you know the thing is when you're talking like this speaking out loud... | Okay, so this is just me talking and brainstorming ideas. One challenge I face is that my spoken words are often not as clear... |
The Two-Column Method preserves the original on the left so you can cross-reference it against the text on the right.
Improve writing works best on blocks of text of around 250-300 words. Fix spelling & grammar can handle 500 words or more, but when the text exceeds that limit, the AI will not only correct errors but also start compressing important details.
When accuracy matters most, like preserving exact quotes as a journalist, use Fix spelling & grammar. Improve writing is fine when dictating first drafts. With podcast transcripts, I reserve Improve writing for the host, while employing Fix spelling & grammar for guests' words.
Improving Transcript Structure
Notion's preset prompts are tailor-made for polishing individual sections of a transcript, but if you want to enhance the conciseness, readability, and logical flow of ideas at a broader level, it's better to use the chat console version of Claude.
Within the chat box, you will attach the full transcript, along with some basic context on the topic and task. You might be able to delete 20-30% of the transcript through these changes alone.
You can ask Claude to look for sections that might benefit from being relocated to improve the flow of the manuscript. Identify any redundant sections and choose the best-worded version to keep, deleting the other section or moving the selected section to where it fits best.
Pull Quotes & Other Flourishes
As a final flourish, you can use a simple extraction prompt to find attention-grabbing quotes, that you can format to stand out from the main text.
These "pull quotes" will draw readers' attention to key points and break up the text to make it more readable.
In essence, we not only tell the story but also ensure it reaches those who seek it.
This post is adapted from "Commanding the Page" (2023).