Court Reporting Lesson

So since I am in school for court reporting, we have what's called a Stenograph machine that we use to take down everything that's being said in court, depositions, etc. It's a pretty neat little machine. When you go to school, you first start in Theory, which is where you learn how to write on the machine. It's basically a new language. Everything you take down is by sound/syllable. A lot of people wonder how you can write SO much faster on a stenograph machine than on a normal keyboard. Well, here's my attempt to explain it.

If you're writing my name on the keyboard it would be:

B R O O K E which equals six letters and six strokes on the keyboard.

On the stenograph machine my name would look like this:

PWRAOBG yes, that says Brooke. As you may have already noticed, it has 7 letters, which is more than the six letters in Brooke on the regular keyboard. Well, you are very observant. Here's the trick. When you are writing on your stenograph machine, all of those letters are being pushed down at once. So you end up writing one stroke instead of 6 for Brooke, which saves you 5 strokes. That's how it becomes faster.

So that's one way it becomes faster. Another way is that we can write a whole phrase in one stroke. We have commonly used phrases, especially in a jury charge, so we come up with what are called briefs. Here's an example:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury = hraeupblgz

If I were to write Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury out on the keyboard, it would be 27 strokes. So you just saved 26 strokes right there.

If I were to write Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury out on my machine (not using the brief) it would be 9 strokes, so you still would be saving 18 strokes.

I have now been in school for 5 years (minus the summer that I couldn't go to school because they closed down the court reporting program at BC, hence the reason we moved to TX, and minus the 8 months I was dating Josh...pretty much didn't go to school at all during that time.) So I guess about 4 years of school so far.

We start in Theory, like I said, and that takes about three months to learn the basic language. Once you get out of school, you start speedbuilding at 60 wpm (words per minute) Once you pass that test (I'm going to brag and say I did that the first day, haha) you move on to 80 wpm, 100 wpm, all the way up to 225 wpm.

That's where I'm at now...225 wpm and I can FINALLY see the light at the end of the tunnel. It has definitely been a frustrating but rewarding experience. I have learned a lot of patience for sure. And I've also been able to really appreciate the sacrifice that Josh has given for me to go to school. He has patiently been waiting for me to finish school and start working so he can go to school, which he's so excited about.

Anyway, back to court reporting.

Each speed you have to pass 2 tests in each category at 97% accuracy.

Jury Charge

Literary (which would be presidential addresses, etc.)

and

QA aka two-voice (question and answer back and forth)

All of these tests are given for 5 minutes.

So right now, I'm having to take down 225 wpm @ 5 minutes with a 97% accuracy to pass my test/graduate. So basically the test has 1,125 words and out of those words I can only have 34 mistakes, including punctuation, to get a 97% accuracy.

This speed has definitely been the hardest. I've been in 225 for about a year, but I finally just passed one of my 225 QAs a little over a week ago. Hoping to pass my next one this next week. After I pass that, and two more mocks (I will explain what that is in a minute) I will be graduated!!!! YAY.

Once you get into 225, you have what are called mocks. These are a mock of the state and national exams.

It consists of

1 Jury Charge

1 Literary

1 QA

but you only have to pass these at 95% accuracy and you have to pass them all in one sitting. So even if you pass the jury charge and the literary and don't pass the qa, then you don't pass the whole thing. In order to qualify for the state exam, you have to pass three of these. I have passed one. I don't see myself having any problem passing these real soon though, since I'm finally writing at 97% the majority of the time.

That's my little lesson on court reporting.

On a side note: my machine that I first got when I started was used, but has been a great machine. But towards the end of last year, it was starting to have some problems here and there. I always intended to use it when I first started working because I didn't really care to spend $5,000 on a new one. But once I found out that they were offering the new machines on a 0% loan, me and Josh decided to go ahead and do that. So, now I have a new machine. I love it and can't wait to actually work with it.

Here are a few pics of Josh trying to fix my old machine (which he actually did fix it. I didn't really have any problems with it after he took it apart and put it back together, but we still thought it was time for a new machine just because we would have no interest)

And here's a picture of what my new machine looks like: