How should I indicate redactions in a dialogue?

Question

I am transcribing an interview, where the speaker's identitifying information must be redacted. How should I present the redactions to make it clear what I did? I am using the dialogue package. I feel like the Censor package is not the right approach, as there is no reason for an uncensored version to exist. I don't want the redacted text to take up the same amount of space as the unredacted text.

Answer 1

If you’re simply omitting minor or confidential details from the transcript, you can use a ellipsis dots “...” which are widely understood for this purpose:

Ellipsis • the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues. • a set of dots (…) indicating an ellipsis.

You can also alter quotes from transcribing verbatim (i.e., word-for-word) with square brackets.

For example:

“Please state your name and age.”

“My name is ... and I am [20-25] years old.”

In LaTeX you would write this as:

''My name is \ldots and I am \[20--25\] years old.’’

I do not recommend blocks of black colour boxes to cover information. This is not a convention for transcripts or quotations. This is for removing sensitive content from an existing confidential document for wider release. Transcripts should all be anonymous without any identifying information, including in the raw .tex file (even if highlighting would cover it in a compiled document).