Formatting Verbatim

When writing in the field of counselling, you will be expected to provide verbatim examples. These examples may
come from a recorded practice session or even your own practice sessions.
Verbatim (direct citation)
Direct citation is appropriate if you want to present just a part of a conversation or one person’s sentence or
question (Notice the comma, the quotation marks, and other punctuation.)

After the session was complete, the client said, “It has been really helpful to talk to you today.”
The client then left quietly and calmly.
Did you notice the comma and the quotation marks?

This is similar to a direct quote, for example:

The author stated, “Being a counsellor is a vocation and not just a job” (Jones, 2017, p. 20).

Verbatim (script)
This is useful when you are presenting a dialogue that goes on for a couple of lines and also if you are using script
from a video. Notice the lack of quotation marks, the colon and the spacing of the spoken words.

If you are using a video you may be required to reference the source and the time within the video. Please consult
your educator for how she or he would like this done.

Counsellor: Thank you for coming today.

Client: It has been really helpful to talk to you today.

Counsellor: Please practise those strategies until we meet again next time.
There is a colon
after each Notice the alignment.
person‘s name.

Did you notice there are no quotation marks?

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