A Course in English Phonetics

Notes on Phonetic Transcription — Getting started

(1) Phonetic symbols must be learnt in conjunction with typical words.

(2) In phonetic transcription there is no scope for personal handwriting.

(3) Take special care not to lapse into orthographic writing.

(4) There are no capital letters and there is no punctuation.

(5) When transcribing connected text, do not use phonetic brackets [ ] or / /.

(6) For better readability, put spaces between the individual words
and // between two sentences.

(7) Contractions are transcribed as one word.

A Course in English Phonetics

Notes on Phonetic Transcription — Stress

(8) Stress marks are placed before the stressed syllable, cf. [»sIl´b´l].
Only the stressed syllables in polysyllabic words are marked,
stressed monosyllabic words do not receive stress marks.

(9) Secondary stress only occurs in words of four or more syllables.

It usually precedes the primary stress, but never falls on the syllable
immediately before it, cf. [«Qk´»demIk].

(10) Weak forms are obligatory in transcribing connected English texts.

They concern all short, unstressed vowels in a text; as a rule, short
vowels (except /I/) which are not realised as [´] are therefore stressed
— but see (8) on stress marking.