cross all t's

With the data collection for the first study completed, which I proudly announced not so long ago, I've transcribed each of the 40-minute interviews verbatim. The task of writing down everyone's dialogue word-for-word is not easy, let me tell you. People -- me included -- just don't speak in complete sentences; run-on sentences and fragments are very common. And transcribing is infinitely harder when people are not speaking the same type of English as you. The most annoying habit I've encountered is that they seem to use prepositions differently, or even drop them entirely. So you don't know if that green squiggle under the sentence in Word is an error made on your part or just the interviewee's way of speaking, without re-playing that section of the recording.

Now with the interviews transcribed I'm listening to the recordings once again to ensure that I've crossed all t's and dotted all i's. Or more accurately, making sure that I have all the um's, ah's, you know's in place -- and that's only my dialogue. Hearing yourself speak definitely makes you more mindful of how you talk. Now I am constantly making sure that I don't add a lot of other fluff in my speech.

You wouldn't believe how many new slangs and lingoes I have encountered. My favourite is mardy -- who would have expected it to mean moody? My goal of citing this book in my thesis seems quite likely now.