Here is the answer the witness gave: “Sandy fell and broke her hip -- not this past July; the July before.” Have I punctuated it correctly? I cannot change context, because it is a transcription. Thanks,
This sounds like a stylebook sort of issue, in the sense that when a person speaks words that could be interpreted as a sentence fragment and could be interpreted as part of the preceding sentence, there would presumably be a rule. If I were making the rule, I'd make it as simple as possible: "Sally fell and broke her hip. Not this past July. The July before." But I'm not making the rule. Is there a stylebook for transcription?
I think that since it's a transcription, i.e. a presentation of somebody's speech pattern, then the sentence does not have to follow the strict rules of grammar. It's not about writing a good sentence, it's about being true to what the speaker said. And people often speak in sentences that are grammatically wrong. Whether you put a comma or a full stop would depend on whether the speaker put a short pause or a long pause between those words, regardless of what grammar dictates. The original post looks alright to me.