Best/Worst Court Reporting Dream Ever

I'm not sure if it was the chili for dinner last night a la Homer Simpson in the chili cook-off episode of season 8, but I just had the craziest dream about court reporting ever.

Scene: A crowded conference room, up to 20 people in attendance.

I walked in to the deposition with all my equipment in tow, knowing full well that I was there 20 minutes early. I proceeded to set up my steno machine and laptop, sat down, and started warming up. Things were going well at first, and I remember making polite conversation with people at the table.

At about the two-minute countdown, I realized suddenly that my mouth and throat felt like they were filled with cotton and that I wasn't going to be able to report the proceedings to the best of my ability with a parched throat, wondering when they'd take the first break. I politely excused myself so I could go get a drink.

I left the conference room in search of the water fountain and figured I might as well use the ladies room while I was out there. Suddenly my surroundings morphed into a high school hallway maze, and I spent an undetermined amount of time trying to find the drinking fountain and restrooms and then my way back to the conference room.

When I finally made my way through the locker-filled labyrinth back to where the parties were waiting, I walked into a room filled with disapproving glares, only to find out they had gone on without me and had completed the deposition while I was out there lost in locker land.

I sat down at my chair to take the second deposition and placed my hands on my steno machine to start writing. I realized that while I was gone, someone had stolen my Stenograph 400 SRT steno machine and replaced it with a non-electric machine with no paper and no memory storage capabilities. You can imagine my disappointment at this time.

So they started the deposition, and I figured since I was already there, I might as well get some lap-tap steno practice and wrote the proceedings without my machine. After a few minutes, I raised my wriggling fingers up above the conference room table almost taunting the rude, mean-faced lawyer directly across from me, and also to let everybody know I wasn't recording the testimony. It was at this point that I looked around the room and all of a sudden realized that there had been a water cooler in the conference room the whole time. Come to think of it, I remember now that I also didn't swear the witness in.

And... scene.

Morals of the story: Arrive early. Make sure you have all your equipment. Use the facilities well before the proceedings, and it can't hurt to carry a bottle of water in your steno bag. Tightly sealed, people.

Keep an eye on your equipment. People do steal steno machines even though they don't know what they are. Ebay doesn't care what it is, just how much money it can fetch. My teacher had one stolen out of her car two years ago. Ask questions, and be honest with the people involved if you're having an equipment or other problems.

And last but not least, don't eat homemade chili within a few hours of going to bed. Trust me on this one.

Finger Drill No. 2




Here's another finger drill for you steno students out there. These aren't just for beginners. Even professionals use finger drills to warm up and solidify correct finger positions. Finger drills are like targeted weightlifting reps for your fingers.

Want more finger drills? Click here.

A Finger Drill

Here's a finger drill for steno students.
Put this on repeat and get those confused fingers set straight!



brig, fled, bro, flick, brat, flub
bran, fled, bra, floss, brute, flag
bris, flow, breed, flat, bribie, flask
brick, flail, bread, flu, Braille

clue, smug, clod, smog, clip, smut
club, smack, college, smile, class
smooch, clog, smash, cloak, smell
clot, snob, claim, somebody



Want more finger drills? Click here.

How to Increase or Decrease Spacing on your Stenograph Stentura SRT

If you own a Stenograph Stentura 400 SRT steno machine and want to know how to adjust the paper spacing, this post is for you.

Knowing how to adjust this spacing is helpful in that when you're trying to save paper, you can decrease the spacing. Or conversely, if you know you're going to be reading back from your notes in class, you might want to increase the spacing to make it easier to read. I found the instructions here but I'll put them here too.

-To make the adjustment, turn the power switch on your machine to the off position.

-Hold down the S- key as you turn it on.

-Press PH- (M- for more) to increase the spacing between strokes or press HR- (L- for less) to decrease the spacing between steno outlines.

-When you are done adjusting the spacing, press KWR- (Y- for yes) or TPH- (N- for no) to save the setting and go back to writing and test it out. Repeat until you have it how you want it.

Have a Stenograph other than the 400 SRT? Check this link for the online versions of user manuals. Click your type of machine in the left column.

How to Practice Without your Steno Machine

Steno students and working professional court reporters, captioners, and CART providers usually lead very busy lives, complete with work, family, and other personal obligations. For that reason, time is precious and when life calls, we sometimes have to put steno on the back burner while we answer. Knowing how to get practice time in without your steno machine is key.

Many of us have a commute that we'd rather be shorter, but what could be looked at as a waste of time can easily be turned into a worthwhile mental exercise. Fill your iPod or whatever flavor MP3 player you like with fun podcasts, dictated lists, and other audios that are a bit above your speed range.

While the tracks are playing, try mentally stenoing the words as they're spoken. You may find that this increases your speed when you go back to your machine and start writing again. A variation on this method would be to tap out the words with your hand or hands (only if you're a passenger -- 10:00 and 2:00, people!) Lap-tap the alphabet, numbers -- whatever comes to mind.

Or say you're in a boring meeting. You may not be able to get full lap-steno action without your coworkers noticing and giving you the stink eye, but why not bring a notebook to the meeting and jot down the steno outlines of words that come up during breaks in conversation or take down some notes too. Hey, it may even cut down on coworkers' requests to get your notes photocopied for them because they weren't paying attention.

Another way of getting in good practice is to review well-written paper steno notes while on the go, as recommended in this blog post by Stenonerd. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but reading steno really helps our brains associate a good steno outline with the word it represents. Happy mental steno, all!

Steno Numbers Abound

A subject as important as numbers in machine shorthand deserves to be revisited. Steno students and some professionals, I'm sure, struggle with how they should do their numbers and get them to come out correctly in the transcript or realtime. The two major schools of thought, I believe, are using the number bar and writing your numbers out in words.

The number bar is a quick, efficient way of inputting numbers. Despite this, I think for some people it might be a cause for pause when they struggle to convert the spoken word "six" to the numerical figure "6." In my opinion, a number bar -F combination is pretty much an arbitrary brief to mean the number 6, as far as theory goes and "writing by sound," a phrase which my dear teachers have shoved down my throat these past few years. Because of this, consistent drilling and practice are necessary to be accurate and fast with numbers.

Using the number bar also allows you to invert your numbers by adding an "EU"  or an * to the stroke, as steno student blogger, Simville02 reminded me recently. "For example, 43 = 34I, 92 = 2I9, 60 = 0I6..." You can also double them up, so "To write numbers such as 22, 55, and 88, you use E (2E, 5E, E8)."

Writing numbers out as words as spoken is the other major method of getting 'em down. The biggest reason people cite for writing their numbers out is accuracy. Lord knows sometimes the fingers hit the wrong keys, and with the number bar, there's no context and really no way to verify if what you have in your notes is what was actually said. With written numbers, a misstroke isn't as big a deal, and the reporter can usually figure out what they meant to write.

The spoken word "fifty-eight" is written as TPEUFT/AEUGT or some variation thereof, and a CAT software dictionary entry is made for that combo to come out as 58. Some people will even go a step further and cut it down to one stroke, TPAEUGT. This second method can result in conflicts, however, but as long as you can work around them and commit a few exceptions to memory, this might be a more a "organic" way of writing as our brains are trained to respond to the sounds of the words.

Within your CAT software itself, there are probably number conversion settings that are available to help you get a cleaner translation. The picture below is from the number settings tab in Total Eclipse, but check out the help file that goes along with your software to get details on how to tweak your specific settings.


So the last winter break of my court reporting education, I actually created an entire Eclipse dictionary for numbers that were written out, including the extremely shortened ones. During my attempt to convert over to this new system, there was too much hesitation as my brain was confused as to where to send my fingers, so right now I'm working on perfecting the number bar system. To infinity and beyond, court reporters, CART providers, and captioners!

Warming Up for Steno Practice or Tests

How appropriately titled this post is for the dead of winter... I also want to wish a happy New Year to everybody!

So to get down to the nitty gritty of it all, someone recently asked me on twitter what my process is for warming up. Any court reporting, CART, or captioning student or professional should warm up before a practice session on the steno machine or for speed tests. What I typically warm up with is the fingerspelled alphabet, numbers 1-100, pangrams such as "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," and then I usually jump in to the audio I was working on last from the day before, slowed down a little bit to start with.

Warming up is essential to prevent forearm muscle strain, like an athlete or musician starting slowly with stretches, and also to get the mind in sync with your fingers before starting on speedbuilding practice. Jumping into a too-fast dictation right away can sometimes be frustrating when you're not writing as fast as you thought you could, and this can lead to the steno blues.

A few months back, I posted a poll on this blog to find out what the magic length of time was for warming up for steno practice. I was pretty surprised to learn that the length of time people practiced was pretty much equally divided amongst all of the options I posted (0-10 minutes, 11-20 minutes, 21-30 minutes, 31-45 minutes, 45+ minutes, or something like that.). So there's no one right answer, in conclusion.

Experiment a little bit to find out what's the right length of warm-up time for you. Try erring on the shorter side before a round of speed tests so you don't tire out in the middle of the test, but don't skimp on the time either. When warming up before a practice session, you could probably err on the longer side. Any excess warm up can also be considered as accuracy practice before jumping into mind-blowing speedbuilding. Happy practicing, steno people!