The inability to understand what someone is saying. The unidentifiable word or words may be either completely incomprehensible <%>. or difficult to identify (..%). There may be partial, but not complete certainty, that something heard is actually what was said by the speaker.

One of the most difficult tasks of transcription is trying to make sense of what another person says. There are instances when a person cannot be understood for a variety of reasons. Speaker interferences, rapid or soft speech, and articulation and enunciation can make hearing and understanding difficult. Dialectal or articulated variants may also make equivalents in the standard language hard to distinguish. Finally, comprehensibility can be affected by technical reasons (e.g. amplitude clipping, cut offs).

Use #1: In order to compensate for these instances, the percentage sign <%> mark is used. There are two related uses of this mark. The first is for a completely unidentifiable portion of speech. You may be able to decide that what you hear is speech, but be unable to make sense of it. In this case, the percentage sign within carat marks is used. If this appears at the end of a turn, it is followed by a <*T>t (the turn break symbol), not by punctuation. This symbol is not to be treated as a lexical item and may not be followed by punctuation; it is always written after punctuation.

This mark may represent a whole turn, a word, or a collection of words within a turn. It may also be used more than once in a row to represent a series of unidentifiable words.

Use #2: Words within a turn, which are somewhat understandable are marked by a final % . In this case, you might be able to make out or have a faint idea of what is being said, but you are not entirely certain.

In this case, the percentage sign by itself follows each word or words, which are only somewhat clear. The words followed by a percent sign are treated as normal words and may be followed by punctuation.