A verbatim is a term that describes a report that contains a word-for-word duplication of an interview without any added opinion.
Verbatims can be critically important for managers to understand what has happened in meetings which they were unable to attend.
It can thus be said that meeting minutes can be verbatims, but they are also not necessarily one.
Such documents can be very important in being presented as evidence for something.
The lack of commentary and opinion allows one to make an assessment of what did actually occur in a meeting, phone call, presentation, etc, based on the content without any context.
It can be argues that the real essence of such presentations for example, depends on context.
But if context is a critical factor of a presentation, then a verbatim would not be an appropriate method of recording the event.
After all, making meaning out of meeting that has occurred are the job of managers. Not that of transcribers.
Transcriptions of interviews made by stenographers for example, are verbatims.
