If you’ve ever received a transcript and wondered why it looks nothing like what you actually said, you’ve experienced the difference between verbatim and clean transcription firsthand.
These are the two real categories in the transcription world. Understanding the difference will help you know exactly what to ask for and what to watch out for.
What Is Verbatim Transcription?
Verbatim transcription captures audio exactly as it sounds (or attempts to). Every um and uh, every false start, every repeated word. No corrections. No cleanup. No verification.
AI transcription tools produce verbatim output by design. They match sounds to words in a database and write down what they hear. They don’t understand context, they don’t know theology, and they don’t know the difference between words that sound similar but mean completely different things.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. These are real errors pulled from AI-generated sermon transcripts:
What the pastor said: “Jesus calls us to be still and know that He is God.”
What AI transcribed: “Jesus calls us to steal and know that he is gone.”
What the pastor said: “We are forgiven through Christ.”
What AI transcribed: “We are forgotten through Christ.”
What the pastor said: “He laid down His life for us.”
What AI transcribed: “He laid down his wife for us.”
Cheap transcription services that rely on overseas workers or underpaid beginners produce similar results. They’re writing down sounds without the theological fluency, contextual understanding, or professional care needed to get it right.
Verbatim transcription isn’t wrong in every context. Legal proceedings and academic research sometimes require it. But for published sermon content, it’s never appropriate.
What Is Clean Transcription?
Clean transcription produces a document that faithfully represents what you said and what you meant to say. It removes the filler words, false starts, and conversational noise that make spoken language hard to read. It corrects grammar, shapes sentences for the page, and verifies every proper name, Bible reference, and quoted source.
That same passage from above, transcribed cleanly, would read exactly as the pastor intended: “Jesus calls us to be still and know that He is God.” No errors. No guesses. No surprises when it goes live on your church website.
Every transcript SermonScribe produces is clean. That’s not a premium option. It’s the only standard we offer.
Shareable vs. Personal Use: The Design Difference
Within clean transcription, there’s one more distinction worth knowing about: whether the transcript is designed for sharing or for personal use.
The standard SermonScribe transcript is a beautifully designed document. Your logo, your brand colors, custom headers and footers, bold and italic formatting for Bible verses, clean paragraph structure, ready to post on your website or share with your congregation the moment it arrives.
Some pastors also need a simpler version: a plain, accurate transcript without the custom design work. This is a good fit for a pastor who needs a personal reference copy or who wants a clean manuscript to hand to a book editor without paying for design elements they won’t use.
Both options are available at SermonScribe. The simpler version is available at a lower price point by contacting Ginger directly for a custom quote.
We recommend starting with the custom-designed transcript even if you think you might only need the simpler version for personal use. Here's why: The custom-designed transcript is ready to post on your church website the moment it arrives, which means your sermon will reach more people from day one.
If you decide to also use the transcript as the foundation of a book, stripping out the formatting for an editor only takes minutes. Going the other direction (taking a plain transcript and adding professional design later) means paying for the work twice.
Not Sure Which Option Is Right for You?
Schedule a free consultation call with Ginger and we’ll talk through exactly what you need and what it would look like. No pressure, no obligation, just a conversation.
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SermonScribe has provided accurate, beautifully designed sermon transcripts for pastors and ministry leaders since 2008. Learn more at SermonScribe.com.
