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spaces do not matter

Posted By: with gross line count on 2005-10-14
In Reply to: Need to count gross lines only w/o spaces, sm - gotclinic

If there is 1 character on a line, it counts as a line.


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My line including spaces is 65 characters. I've heard that not counting spaces
takes away over 35% of your line count. I believe it too because you have at least 15 or so spaces on each line that you type. Use your first sentence up top as an example; you had 77 char and 21 spaces - in that line that would be a little less than 30% of your characters that you didn't get paid for. I don't think it's worth it and wouldn't want to work without getting credit for my spaces.
Doesn't matter, IF you are not paid an hourly wage, i.e. a set amount no matter - sm
how much or how little you type, say $12.00/hour, you do not get OT. As someone mentioned here, certain jobs are exempt, and as most of us are paid a flat rate of .08 cpl or .09 or .10, whatever it is, that is all we get regardless of how many hours under or over 40 hours we go. If you want OT then go get an in-house job or get a job doing something else.
They used to not pay for spaces, but a poster here said they are getting spaces paid. Are there 2
s
Pay No Spaces, Type No Spaces nm
nm
without spaces compared to with spaces
10 cpl without spaces equals to how many cpl with spaces? 
Spaces versus no spaces....

Can someone tell me how big of a difference it makes if a company pays for spaces versus no spaces.  I have only every been paid without spaces.  I have been offered a position that pays for spaces, but the cpl is less than I am making now.  I am not sure if getting paid for spaces will make up for the pay cut.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!


I did say that there are some that no matter what
will still be on the streets. In Houston though, our mental health resources/job training/etc. are severely lacking.
I think that no matter how much
They will always need US MTs because they will always have clients who will refuse to allow their work to be done by overseas MTs.

I think that everyone should be allowed to further their education if they so desire. I am studying for the LSAT and hope to be in law shcool by next year. But, this is really something that must be worked out between the two of you. Luckily, I don't have a husband to tell me what I can and cannot do. I'll only get married when I am truly financially secure, so that I'll have the means to leave him if need be.
Does it matter?
nm
I am a CMT and it does matter
to me, as a professional MT for my own satisfaction.

The English language is ever-changing. It has changed significantly since I was in high school and college. The BOS changes, technology changes, everything changes (except God). In healthcare, we learn to adjust to change or change professions.

I work for a large healthcare corporation/satellite facility, and CMT is not even recognized of any importance in regards to pay. The fastest MT at the keyboard wins -- quantity outweighs quality. As a CMT, I do not make "one penny" more than anyone else on my team. Since I am home-based, earn excellent benefits, and the pay isn't too bad, I continue to work for this corporation.

My supervisor's (a non-MT)philosphy is the more experience one has the more money one will make (ha!)

Again, I am thankful I took the extra step to become a CMT -- I strive for the highest quality for patient safety, my initials are on every report, and each report is a portrait of my professionalism.




She even made the comment that anyone, anywhere could be certified in anything. I encouraged her to take the CMT exam, but so far she has not attempted.
Does not matter in the least
about if you even have a job. If you have anything in your name, a house, carr, checking acct, whatever, you can have a garnishment. The company that now wants to garnish your wages probably has sent you duns and they want their money. More than this, I have worked for a company before (do not know how yours is) but only one (1) garnishment and you no longer had a job. Places you work really do not like to put up with this kind of stuff.
no matter if you are an IC...
you have to commit to something be it hours per day or lines per day. I am an IC and I commit to 500 lines a day. My day is from 12 am to 12 pm. Anytime in there, all I have to do is 500. I can do more if I want, I can work on the weekends if I want, but I have to do my 500 lines a day M-F. I don't see how so many can be confused by this. Seems so simple. Everyone of us that takes a job with somebody be it IC or employee has to make some kind of commitment.
No matter
I don't agree with that. As an English speaker I could communicate well enough with another American to get a history. They may be difficult but I could get it. I mean I haven't met another American yet who I have not been able to understand at all.
I would think you could ask, but no matter
what the "average" for a specific account it, an MTSO has a right to require a certain line count of its transcriptionists to maintain employment.
I did/do this, too. It's a matter of..

constantly re-directing yourself to the dictation/transcription in real time. What I did when I found my mind wandering: I would rewind the dictation to the beginning and force myself to relisten through it (to be sure I didn't omit anything).  The problem I noticed more than leaving out dictation was duplicating it, i.e. typing the same phrase or sentence twice. It takes a day or two of this method, but that's what it took to keep me focused.

Hope this helps.


Yes, it could matter a lot sm
My company decided to make me PT and IC and stopped taxes. When spring came around I didn't have the $to pay and had to cash in my 401K. Wonder what they'll do to me next spring, as I've paid PART of the taxes as I go along, but am not up to date..........
I don't think you are going to have much say in the matter - sm
other than thanks or no thanks.

In my state in the So West, 13.oo - 15.00.

Try looking in your local newspaper, in the want ads, to get a handle on the going rate.

3 cpl no matter what
which is why VR is so problematic....if the starting document has to be heavily edited you are getting peanuts for having to take alot of time fixing it. AND you still have to listen to the whole thing so if it is a long long recording (with lots of dead air space) you really are taking a hit.  Many times I find I can type it quicker from scratch.  VR is just not there yet, or should I say the line rates for VR are just not there yet.  Companies have no way of guaranteeing that the starting document will be good, so it's like playing Russian roulette--you never know what you are going to get.
I would think it's a matter of
servers are set up to reject attachments due to spam, viruses, etc.  They probably figured if you couldn't follow the application instructions how would you follow the account instructions? 
what does it matter to u
hi what does it matter to you, yes im not from US and if you dont like c my posts, please do not.  I dont care if the english is broken.  The subject matters.
No matter what anyone says, somehow
I think reverse 'cherry-picking' or whatever you call it goes on a lot more than the other way around. This is one MT who NEVER ever catches a break, no matter what time of day, what day of the week I consistently get the worst most difficult dictators, and the more I have complained the worse it gets. My pay is so low it is indicative of how desperate I am for money, perhaps another reason I get the bottom of the barrel. If in my queue an 'easy' dictator appears, it is about 85% of the time pushed down the list as the more difficult dictators pop up in their place, consistently, over and over, all day long such that I never do get those easier dictations. Continually I am told no one is assigning my work but as I mentioned, 18 years experience, that is not a reasonable answer because the odds would be all wrong...

Somebody gets those easier reports, every day, all day, but most never me. For my own sanity I sign off here and there just to take a break from the abuse but no matter what I do the only work I get is the bottom.

Not sure what causes it and frankly I do not know how anyone would know someone else is picking work unless they are doing it themselves or those people who are in charge who are specifically assigning bad work and then sitting back to see if you do it (?).

We are all vulnerable because there is no accountability and everything is covered and managed and the bottom line is there are people who somehow know how to makes umteel zillion lines but a bigger percentage of MTs like myself who struggle every day just to make minimum...
what the matter with you?
There is ONLY

1 TYPO 'bookd' instead of books !

Is English your 1st language?

Because you see mistakes where there are none!

Either you need a new pair of eyeglasses or a book about grammar and spelling.

Go to bed, it's late!
DQS no spaces? Are you sure?
Are you sure DQS does not count spaces? When I first started, I took a report and manually counted each and every character, space, return, etc, and found that the lines count I was given for the report matched (rounded up) my manual count. Even now, I copy and past every single report to Word Perfect (which does not count spaces on my version), and DQS always exceeds my Word Perfect character count by a bunch, so I figure I am not being cheated. Take a medium size report, print it, and try counting manually and see what you think.
I know they don't pay for spaces
So tell me why when one day I did 800 lines and then 3 days later it shows I did 670 lines when I actually did 800 lines.  The 800 lines is without spaces, headers, footers.  So did those lines magically disappear?  This happens to me weekly.
spaces
LOL.  I think we need to transcribe a few reports without spaces..heck, let those being paid hourly fill the spaces in.
spaces
LOL. You just made my whole day.

iwoudn'tmindtypingaletterwithnospacestoday.

BTW that is really hard to do.
spaces
anycompanypettyenoughtonotcountspacesisacompanytostayawayfrom.  Who'spocketdoyouthinkthe$forthespacesislining?  Quite frankly, I've been a med trans for nearly 30 years and I'm so damned tired of watching big business cut into our means of living.  How did all this start anyways? Used to be in the old days that we were all just ICers looking to make a living, and we did in fact make a decent living.  Then came the introduction of nationals and everyone ran to them thinking they'd be making BIG money.......Now the nationals are in place and their CEOs are making the bucks we thought we'd get a piece of. Wish there were a way of reversing this.
Spaces
She's lying. MQ does NOT PAY FOR SPACES. They treat their transcriptionists like crap. I found this out and left them. I found it out for a fact.... They do NOT PAY FOR SPACES. They have started this "trend" and other companies have begun to follow suit. They make me physically ill.
Spaces

Been there 2-1/2 months.  Love it.  Plenty of work.


Issue:  Spaces.  Recruiter said no spaces.  Trainer said no spaces. 


On the line count screen, clicked on one of my reports, then had an option to look at payroll stuff on it, so I did.  It added up not only every single character I typed but spaces AND carriage returns (I had 719 spaces and 56 carriage returns) and used that number divided by 65 for my line count.  NO KIDDING.  I am surprised.


Who knew?!  I'm excited! 


spaces

Was this on DQS?  And could you give more detail on how you did this (i.e., what exactly did you click on to get this info?).  Thanks! 


spaces

I was told years ago that I was not paid for spaces on the account that I was on, but some accounts were.  It depended upon how it was set up when they won the account.  I think that's why there are some who are and some who are not, thus the confusion.  The only way to know is to manually count your lines and compare them to what the system counts. 


10 cpl with spaces. nm
x
What about spaces?
x
no spaces
I kind of messed up my original post.  I meant to say that spaces are not included.  Thanks.
I think w/o spaces is 30% less than with spaces. nm
x
They do pay for spaces
At one time they did not pay for spaces but they do now.  They are fine to work for- I have worked there 3 years and have never had a problem.  They do not lie to us and they don't make anyone work 7 days.  They are a stickler for quality.
Pay me for your spaces or else...
If they don't want to pay for them they must not feel they're important...just don't type them and then see what they say.  : )
Spaces vs not
Take one of your old documents and figure it out both ways, even if you don't have a line counting program, do it in MS word and that will figure both ways and then you can see the difference and divide and see what percentage you are losing for no spaces.   At least that will show you the difference between the two.
2 spaces
client probable couldn't care less.....but correct way is 2.
I would take 17 cpl with no spaces any day
Geez what do you people want?
spaces vs no spaces

Take a document and count with and without spaces and times it by your cpl rate to see what the difference is.  Very easy to do.  If you don't have a document, type a page or even a paragraph and even using microsoft word count, do the same.  It shows you with and without spaces and you can see the difference.


Curious how do you make any money as it sounds like your doctor's office only pay 9 cpl (they are cheap and I can only charge 9 cpl)  or did you mean you pay your IC 9 cpl and are not stating what you charge your accounts?   


Pay with no spaces
Would some of the MTs who work with no spaces but do get headers mind sharing what their pay actually is? For me, I always break it down to what I am averaging an hour. After 15 years this just keeps going down , along with less benefits, and I am also starting to reevaluate my "career" choice.
Spaces vs. non - sm
When the company I worked for was going to IC status for everyone, and changing to not paying for spaces, I worked out the difference between several documents - it amounted to about a 28% difference - in other words, the line count was 28% less if they didn't pay for spaces.  Pretty big chunk of change, so I left that company.
2 spaces
In WORD - tools, options, spelling and grammar - setting bottom right - change to 2 spaces after period - top right of the window that opens up
Spaces vs no spaces
What do you think of getting paid 12 cents a line/65 cpl, no hard returns or spaces?
Spaces vs no spaces
IC. 
Spaces vs no spaces
Thanks for all the input! I will see when I get my first check. I will keep you posted!
I do 2 spaces

I have always done two spaces because that was the way I was taught, and I think it looks better and is easier on the eyes too.  I do agree though that if you are not getting paid for spaces, then just do a single space.


Well, I use 2 spaces.....
...but that may be because I learned to type way back in the dark ages before computers were in wide use.

According to the AAMT Book of Style for Medical Transcription (2nd edition), page 66:

"When using a proportional-spaced font it is customary to mark the end of the sentence with a single space; however, double-spacing is still widely used, especially with non-proportional fonts, such as Courier. The choice is usually determined by departmental or company policy."

That would seem to indicate that the single space is now the preferred method; however, it depends on the company.
If it is a good buy, it should not matter! Go for it. sm
I would not care if the street was named Poop! If it is a good buy, I'd go for it. Who cares what the street name is. You are being silly about this.
well it doesn't matter
that's for sure....