CATEGORIZE A TEXT SELECTION

Categorize a Text Selection

Once you’ve created a Collection, you are ready to Categorize text data. This tutorial ScreenCast demonstrates how to categorize a text selection in Transana. This is also known as creating a Standard Quote.

Create a Standard Quote

Choose and select (highlight) some text by clicking the start of the text, holding your left mouse button down, dragging to the end of the text you want to select, and releasing the mouse button.  If you want to make a Quote from a whole sentence, you don’t need to select the text. Instead, place the Document cursor somewhere in the sentence and create your Quote. Transana will automatically use the sentence for the Quote in the absence of a manual selection.

Next, double-click the Collection in which you want to place your Quote. If the Collection was not expanded in the Data Window, the Collection will expand and you will need to double-click again. But if it was empty or expanded, double-clicking it will trigger Quote creation.

Alternately, you can right-click the Collection (Ctrl-Click on macOS) and select “Add Quote” from the pop-up menu.

You now see the Add Quote dialog box.

Enter an identifying title for this Quote in the Quote ID field.

Notice that your Quote is automatically assigned any Default Keywords that you assigned to the Document from which this Quote was created. We can add more Keywords to the Quote here if we wanted.

Click OK to complete Quote creation.

Analytic Memos

It’s now a good idea to create more analytic memos. No action in Transana should be considered finished until you have written about it in an analytic memo.

Right-click or Ctrl-click your Quote and choose Add Quote Note from the popup menu. Enter a name for your note as the Note ID and your initials under Note Taker. Press OK.

Press Ctrl-T to insert a date-time stamp into your Note, then enter analytic process information about the creation of the Quote. You might want to write about why you made the selection you did, why you included the coding you did, how you see this quote fitting in with your overall analysis, and any questions you might have, among other issues. Close the Note by pressing the Esc key when you are finished.