Work & (Game) Play

I used to think that work and play were mutually exclusive. Well, it turns out that they're not, so what would be better than combining the two? Not much. For that reason, I want to share with you an awesome way to practice steno while having fun. After all, time flies when the latter occurs.

Putting on Your Court Reporter Hat

When I was a kid, I loved to watch Reading Rainbow.  It came on right after Sesame Street, if I can recall correctly.  My all-time favorite Reading Rainbow episode was one I remember seeing many, many times. The episode was called a Three Hat Day and featured the same-titled book, A Three Hat Day by Laura Geringer and Arnold Lobel. Something about that episode was so magical. I watched it every time it came on. When LeVar Burton, the host, put on different hats, he was transported to different places based on the hat he put on. He put on a jockey's hat and instantly he was riding on the horse in the middle of a race.  He put on a hockey mask and became the goalie in the NHL, and the last one, I believe, was putting on a train conductor's hat.

So the question occurred to me, what kind of a hat does a court reporter wear? And wouldn't that be awesome if it were that easy? To just put on a court reporter's hat and be done with school and be out in the working world would be pressing the proverbial easy button. Unfortunately such a magic bullet doesn't exist, so get practicing! Of course, you can finish reading this post. THEN get to practicing.

Figuratively speaking, a student does have to put on their thinking cap. Always be listening to others, TV, and radio for new words to add to your dictionary. Never hesitate to try a new steno technique out. Be a force of positive energy around your fellow students. Dress the part.

Or literally speaking, when it comes to breaking away from your loved ones to go get your practice hours in, you could don a favorite hat or sweatshirt to get in the zone, so to say. Then take it off when you're done practicing. (Wash it frequently!) Make a rule that there's no surfing the net or being interrupted in between takes while wearing your court reporting "hat." We have to learn to tune out distractions while working, so we might as well start now. Sorry, hun, for not saying hi right away when you get home. xoxo

Just like a runner can buy a new pair of jogging shoes or athletic gear to spice up their workout routine, we too can find "the magic" again and get excited to practice. These are what I throw on when I'm not to be bothered while practicing.

I made these. So happy w/ how they turned out!

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 Twisters/Silly Sentences

When I was a kid, my grandma would watch me during the day when my mom was at work. The two of us would read, do activities, play games etc. (Note to self:  Do not play Aggravation with young children. It may teach them to be a poor loser for the rest of their life.) One of my favorite books to read was my illustrated tongue twister book. We would laugh and laugh at each other's attempts at saying "rubber baby buggy bumpers," or "she sells seashells by the seashore." My inner court reporting student thanks you for that experience, Grandma.

I think the key to these is the similarities and differences between the words, which make the brain really work at interpreting what you heard or read. It's also excellent for practicing soundalikes and conflict differentiation. I'm incorporating this type of thing into today's steno practice session. Some are actual tongue twisters found on the web, and a few are mine, specially written for finger positions that give me trouble. Try writing these on your steno machine several times.

Click here for the audio file

Freshly fried flying fish.


How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.


The epitome of femininity.


Pop the cork. I'm home from work.


Should the child or could the child shine their thick leather shoes?


A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.


Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?


Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.


Many an anemone sees an enemy anemone.(I use TPHAOEPL for enemy.)


They could choose to share their chocolate cashews.

Want more tongue twister fun? Go here for an A-to-Z list or go here and follow the links for longer tongue twister poems.

Hah! They have rude/dirty tongue twisters here. Not offensive by themselves, but if you get going too fast out might pop a cuss word. A good way to check if your swears are well enough "hidden in your CAT dictionary" to not come out in realtime translation!

On a personal note, (like the above childhood memories weren't enough, haha) I passed my second 200 wpm Q&A on the last testing opportunity of the season. I'm excited, to say the least. It also means that I reached goal #4 of the short-term goals I set back in August, which you can read here. So on that note, why don't you all set a short term steno goal to reach by the end of break and some for the upcoming semester. Your future inner court reporter thanks you too. :)

How to Slow Down or Speed Up YouTube or Other Videos for Steno Practice

I get so bored sometimes with typical school-assigned audio tracks, so when that happens, I usually change gears right away and do some song, video, or podcast practice. As alluded to in the previous post, there is a program you can use to speed up or slow down YouTube videos or other flash video.

It's called Enounce Myspeed. I personally use the regular $30 version of MySpeed for Windows, but there's a 7-day free trial of MySpeed Premier ($100) at that link, after which you'd need to register to continue using it. It's a good way to see if this is something you'd be interested in buying.

Staniel over on depoman.com has taken this concept to a new level and has created some videos of his song and podcast practice which can be found on here. Happy practicing, and keep changing up the practice routine to keep things spicy and fresh. (Hmm, I must be hungry.)

This is just a tool I find useful for practicing videos or other flash-based audio or video at multiple speed levels, like the practice tracks found on some web-based dictation libraries (like StenoU) or videos on YouTube. I'm not getting a thing for promoting this program, just think it's worthwhile to share.

Here are some video depositions that would be great to practice to:

Cindy Anthony Deposition Part 1
Joe Cruz Deposition
Bill Gates Deposition Part 1

And then I can't resist. Once you have your practice in, check out these nightmare/funny depositions for a laugh. Caution: some coarse language

Best Deposition Ever
What Not to Do During a Deposition
I Don't Recall

Play the (Virtual) Piano With Your Steno Machine

Before court reporting school starts back up on Monday, I thought I'd share with you one last piece of CR fun as a tribute to the quickly disappearing summer. I think a lot of steno people are either musicians, have played instruments in the past, or can be deeply moved by a piece of music. That said, here's one way we can get in touch with our musical side while putting some time in on the steno machine.

For those of you running Eclipse, go into your user settings (ALT-U) under the Realtime tab and click "add" before starting a realtime file.  From there, select "Keyboard macro" in the output format drop-down box. Make sure under Comm device that the COM port coincides with the port your steno machine is plugged into. Use the setup button and click on device manager if you're not sure which port you're using. (Not running Eclipse? Check your help file to see how to activate the keyboard output.) For CaseCatalyst, it's called Stenokeys and DigitalCAT, it's CatNip.

Now here comes the fun part: Go to Virtual Piano and once it's loaded, click "Enter" to start it up. Click on the keyboard. By writing different words and/or letter combinations, you can hear chords and notes as you practice word lists, finger drills, etc. Experiment, have fun, and try out different alphabets and outlines!

Let it Be
(Use your small letter alphabet for this. For me, it's the left side letter plus the asterisk key.)
1wtu 1wtu 5wry 5wry 6etu 6etu 5wry
4eti 4eti 1wtu 1wtu 3wru 5wry 5wry
4eti 3wru 2etu 1wtu

6etu 6etu 5wry 5wry 4eti 4eti
1wtu 1wtu 1wtu 1wtu 5wry 5wry
4eti 3wru 2etu 1wtu


For more songs, including Fur Elise (that one's fun!) and A Whole New World, click on Main Menu and then Music Sheets. One could probably even create a separate dictionary file with strokes representing actual chords. Maybe someday steno music could even become a new kind of competition at state and national conventions! Hey, dream big, right? ;)

Muscle Memory and Steno

While I'm on the subject of becoming a master of one's craft, I have to share a video of famed violinist Jascha Heifetz, who is precisely that -- a master of his craft. I stumbled upon this while researching how his name was spelled when it came up in a dictation. His first name, for the record, is pronounced YA/SHA, so that's how I wrote it. Thank goodness for Google!

Start at 3:48 if you want to see something truly amazing. Just watch how the hand on the neck moves. He would have made an awesome court reporter!


I think this video demonstrates just how important good muscle memory is to both a stenographer and a world-class violinist. Imagine just how many countless hours of repetition and practicing went into perfecting this piece! Because court reporters don't have the luxury of taking the exact same dictation every time on the job, there are slight differences in the way a violinist practices for a performance and how a court reporter or student practices for a test or deposition or CART job, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Muscle memory, as defined by Wikipedia "is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition.  When a movement is repeated over time, a long term muscle memory is created for that task; eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort.  This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems."

Muscle memory is so powerful that court reporting students must be conscious of their practice technique and be careful not to practice slop for too long. While musicians practice until they hit a sour note and then stop and do it over until they get it right, I still say the CR student should slop before drop in test taking situations. However, the bulk of a steno student's practice time still needs to be spent making good, clean strokes to build muscle memory for perfect outlines.

After you go through the super-fast blazing dictation once and "let your fingers fly," my teacher would say, go back over your notes or realtime transcript and practice just the words you messed up or hesitated on and those immediately before the trouble spots until they're automatic. Then use your VSP to slow it down and do it again, this time focusing on accuracy. Bump it up; slow it down, and write the take at at least three different speed levels. You've seen the P90X infomercials, right? This is classic muscle confusion, while still bringing it down to realtime speed to maintain accuracy and reinforce good muscle memory. A delicate balance, it is. Run, don't walk to your steno machines!