Transcription services handle a shiur badly, and they hide the damage. This is not only the general purpose ones. Even the models tuned for yeshivish will put down the Meiri or the Maharal where the Maharil was said, and split Har Grizim into “HaGriz in.” A few words fall out of a line and the sentence still reads smoothly. Nothing looks wrong on the page, so nobody catches it, and it goes to print that way.

Getting this right is the whole business. Every recording is set down more than once, independently, and the versions are held against each other. Where they disagree, the difference is settled before any writing starts, and whatever cannot be settled with confidence gets listened to again. Names, mareh mekomos, and the Aramaic and the Yiddish are resolved rather than guessed.

You should never be proofreading our mistakes at eleven o'clock on Thursday night.