Hi - Here's my first poll question! Do you charge for spaces?

I have wondered about this, actually. My company considers a line to be 55 characters without spaces, and I know most companies are 65 characters with. I'd be curious whether anyone's figured out which is more $$$ for the MT...

The company that I work for does a total characters divided by 65... spaces included. The lady that owns this company feels that if we PUT the characters in there, then we should get paid for them. A lot of companies use a line counter program (naturally) and I think you get Jipped with them... they just are not accurate if you keep track of characters for yourself...

Good point . . .

I'm not certain but I believe that the majority of the MT companies do includes spaces; as you said, after all it is a keystroke. I think that even the line-counting programs have an option for including them. I'm in the midst of changing MT companies and the one I am going to pays by the line and includes spaces.

I think it's only fair to charge for spaces because it is a keystroke. Unless the physician would like their dictation to look like this -

Lungsareclear.Abdomenissoftandnontender...
hee hee! OK, so I'm overtired!

Kip

I agree with Kip. Spaces should be counted because it is a keystroke. The company I work for charges per black character (no spaces - 65 characters = 1 line). I guess that's an angle that's needed in my area, as the doctors have a choke hold on their purses! However, I also think they use it as a "perk" so the doctor doesn't feel he/she is being nickled and dimed to death.

Just think. . .If you check around in your area and find out that the MTs/ICs charge for spaces and word gets out that you don't, you would probably end up with the majority of the business over time. But that's just my opinion. :p