While InqScribe does not directly support the text formatting necessary for Jeffersonian Conversational Analysis, there are ways of achieving similar results using InqScribe with Microsoft Word.

The main formatting feature that is missing is the use of the underscore for “stress” and the “:__” intonation contours.

So our solution is to use alternative standard markup for the underscores, with Word doing the final processing. This should work so long as underscores aren’t used for something else.

In InqScribe then, the technique would be to use underscores to mark the beginning and end of any underlines.

The Word Replace would be something like:



“Find all instances of  and replace it with formatting underline”

Here’s an example of how that might work…

…for single letter in middle of word:

[Y e:]_a_ h,=

…for multiple words:

_I din'_ know th_at_?

…for use with colons:

y_ou_:

To use Word to convert:

1. Paste this text into Word:

[Y e:]_a_ h, _I din'_ know th_at_ t_his_: would _wor_k!

This is a “transcript” example where the underscores are:

  • at the beginning of a word
  • a single letter in the middle
  • punctuation marks
  • multiple letters in the middle
  • multiple letters at the end of a word
  • multiple words

2. Select “Edit→Replace”

3. Click on “Use wildcards”

4. Put this in the “Find what:” box:

_(*)_

5. Put this in the “Replace with:” box:

\1

This will find all characters that start and end with an underscore, and replace t with the match, minus the underscores that wrap the text.

Your result should look like this:

“[Y e:]a h, I din’ know th+at+ t+his+: would +wor+k!”

6. With the cursor still in the “Replace with:” box, select the “Format” popup menu, choose “Font…” and select the Underline style you want to use (e.g. single thin solid line).

7. Click on “Find Next” to make sure it’s matching. And then “Replace” or “Replace All”

This should replace all the underscores with underlines.

This should work the same way for superscripts as well, using a caret

^

instead of underscore.

We will continue to improve this and update this as we learn more.

Please let us know if that helps and if you have any additional questions.