About the Authors

Jim Hall

Jim graduated from what was then Orange County (California) College of Court Reporting, attained his certifications as a California Certified Shorthand Reporter and Registered Professional Reporter in 1979, and began working as a freelance reporter.  He has worked as a freelance reporter, captioner, and CART provider.  Jim captioned the televised U.S. House of Representatives floor proceedings for 16 years.

In addition to creating training materials for English-language reporters and captioners, Jim created Spanglotype, a Spanish steno theory, and trained bilingual stenographers to caption in Spanish.  Jim also helped develop the translation system for RealCap®, a proprietary captioning software. 

Jim has trained dozens of reporters to become realtime writers, and he has also trained realtime writers to become sports captioners and congressional captioners.  He has supervised and been responsible for the on-air quality of captioners at two major captioning companies, and has reviewed the on-air work of captioners on a daily basis for over 13 years. 

Tammie Shedd

Tammie Shedd, RPR, FAPR, DSA, has been reporting since 1978.  She has worked as a freelancer, official, captioner, and CART provider.  She has been the head of realtime captioning, at two major captioning companies, since 1984.
Tammie has developed captioning training programs for multiple domestic and international companies, and co-authored Real-Time Writing, first and second editions, books used by court reporters retraining from traditional reporting to realtime reporting.  

A member and chair of the National Court Reporters Association’s realtime and testing committees, Tammie has also served on many other NCRA committees.  She has given numerous presentations to the NCRA and various state and local court reporters associations.

In 2006, Tammie was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the National Court Reporters Association, the highest, most prestigious award presented by the association.