A transcript is the one handout that gives the players somebody’s exact words, and the one that can admit, in square brackets, that some of them were lost. The clue is often in the brackets.
The agency and its division, the title, the case number, the date and the place, and a list of everyone present with their part in it. Then the record itself, one line at a time: the time, who spoke and what they said. A line can instead be a gap in the record, such as “[inaudible]” or “[signal lost]”, or a remark by whoever kept it, and both print across the page as notes. A closing note, the signatures and a stamp you place yourself finish the sheet.
A 1920s police stenographer’s typescript of a sexton’s interrogation, a present-day wiretap transcript with timecodes and a classification banner, a derelict freighter’s distress beacon buffer on an amber screen, a scribe’s record of a confession before a witch-hunter on ruled vellum, and an Antarctic expedition’s wireless log filled in by hand. Each opens with its own example, and each lets the record fail in its own way. A4 at 300 DPI.
What was taken from the witness afterwards goes on an Evidence Report, and the folder the transcript is filed in is a Case File.