Swears in my early 20s I used to work in a wildfire management job and that meant that I got to spend a lot of time in helicopters chasing wildfire and all those kinds of things there’s a lot of excitement is a lot of really entertaining times one time that stands out to me those kind of funny was a buddy of mine who had actually grown up with we played volleyball in high school together Him and I are on the same crew and we got sent out to go check on a smoke so smoke is anytime there’s like a hint or a thought there might be a fire there and so when we got there it turned out that there was actually a decent size smoke and so we went around and we had to go around and around and around and around arena helicopter in the air and were banking and returning and returning and returning and eventually we finally go OK well according to what we’re going to assess the nearest fuel sources more than a kilometre away so we’re not really that worried so we’ll market but we won’t worry about it we fly back to the base and we’re getting we’re almost there and my body starts looking white 0 somebody saw dude dude I’m I’m not well OK what’s the matter is that do I think I think I get sick I think I’m getting sick strike will find her bucket find your bucket when it rains like find your heart at hold onto it put in front of you if you puke you’re going to puke in the bucket and we literally got like six feet off the ground where almost landed he almost made it an I’ve awesome just start op check like Oh yes ruthless felt so bad for him he had to go and wash his helmet out after ’cause they wouldn’t give him a new one mostly because they were out of stock but off Rick I just felt bad for the guy how yeah we had a few situations that were always a little hairy like that another time that was kind of similar well not similar but it’s another time with the same guy we went off and we we were on initial attack an initial attack means that we hit every single one of the first fires and so we go in we take out the the big fire or we try to knock it down as much as we can and then the second cruise come in and start mopping it up after and we go back to base and set up well my body Nolan and I we’ve been sitting there we doing this since 9:00 in the morning and it was only 11:00 we’d already hit four fires that day I hadn’t even had time to sit down and have a coffee yet and I still remember like I had cooked a little something quickly was had it going on the stove and then I poured myself a coffee and I just sat down hey I just sat down and then ah I was about to take a sip of coffee and they started causing a go go go it’s time to go and so off God sake OK here we go and so take off running and booking it to the heli and all of a sudden I hear hollering behind me in a turn around there’s you equipment manager she’s running after me she got my lunch she dumped it all into a plate Saran wrapped it for me and handed me the plate at the fork and said eat it on the flight and it’s alright whatever and so run the rest of the way the helicopter with my Saran wrap lunch in my fork and eat it on the fly I thank God was one of 10 minute flight ’cause I had time to scarf that down and Landon got to work

Transcribed by Microsoft Word.

1. How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

The first thing that strikes me when looking at the text was that there is a massive wall of text for the whole story. There are an extremely limited amount of mechanics and writing structure to the writing. There is no discernable amount of punctuation. Capitalization does show up but only for names and the personal pronoun “I”. You cannot discern between when one person is talking or another as there is no marking of when that is occurring.

2. What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

The most notably wrong thing with the text is that it does not have the punctuation or structure of a traditional text. It makes it a little hard to read and full discern what is happening. Different speakers are not denoted in any way. There is also quite a few errors from when some words were wrongly transcribed.

What is most notably right about the text is that it keeps the core of the story. It has all the elements still mostly discernible and you can still basically understand what is occurring. It is not flawless but it does work. It also did a good job of transcribing my misused words. It caught most of my ‘likes’ and ‘ahs’. It even transcribed slang correctly such as ‘heli’. It also caught double words from the odd stutter.

3. What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The most common mistakes were improperly transcribed words or words that were missed entirely. I think that these two had the greatest effect on reducing the clarity of the story as it made some sentences almost nonsensical and harder to understand. A lot of the other ‘errors’ could be read around with the knowledge that this is a transcribed piece of writing. However, some of them are much harder to understand and completely detract from the story itself. The best example of this is the “we’re almost there and my body starts looking white 0 somebody saw dude dude I’m I’m not well” line.

This should actually read, “we’re almost there and my buddy starts looking white, ‘Oh buddy.’

‘Dude, dude, I’m not well.’”

Even knowing the story I had a hard time understanding exactly what’s going on in this particular line. I also had a hard time discerning who was who when my friend and I were talking back and forth before he got sick. The lack of clarity in that part of the story made it really hard to fully understand what was going on.

4. What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

If I had scripted the story it would have been a little easier to understand but I firmly feel that the biggest weaknesses in this story was how the words were transcribed by Microsoft Word. It is a fairly powerful piece of technology but it is not flawless and there are clearly still some limitations. I have not used it extensively and I think that I actually have to state when there is punctuation or new paragraphs. The two things that would make the greatest difference for this story would have been if I had more experience using the technology or if the technology were more intuitive and powerful making it smoother to use for someone with limited experience.

5. In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

If I were to simply have told you this story, it would have made perfect sense and you would have understood exactly what was happening from beginning to end. Were I to take the time to write it out I feel the result would have been just as easy to discern. The weak link in this exercise is neither the story nor the medium but rather the technology in the middle responsible for the transcription. It does not do a perfect job of transcribing the spoken word into the conventions of traditional writing. What this may suggest is that oral storytelling differs greatly from written storytelling and that oral storytelling does not always need to be transcribed onto paper as it may not do the original story any justice, particularly if it were to be judged by its’ conformity to the rules and conventions of the written word.