Realtime: Improving your Writing

Remember that we are in pursuit of excellence. If you continue to set goals for yourself and continue to work on your skills, you will continue to improve. The more you improve, the easier your job gets. And that's a fact!

Write smarter

Polish up your stenography skills

The best of the best practice on the writer routinely. Don't rely on the jobs you take to continue to give you the skills you need to help you move forward and progress. Remember, “practice makes permanent.” Everything you do to hone and enhance your skills is an investment in yourself and in your future.

Practice material resources

• Stenospeed
• StenoLife
• Simply Steno
• Speed Steno Divas

Polish up your theory

Improving your theory enhances your daily realtime. Knowing your theory inside and out improves your accuracy and prevents hesitation, which is the ultimate realtime-accuracy killer.

Fine-tune your dictionary

Having intimate knowledge of what is in your dictionary is crucial. Purge/clean up your personal dictionary routinely so your realtime doesn't live by the garbage in, garbage out premise. Realtime is not an exact science by any means, but double-checking the steno and the English in the entries you add to your dictionary daily is a good idea, and routine dictionary maintenance should not be neglected. 

Thoughts about strokes

Method 1: Writing shorter, not longer

Writing short is one method of improving your writing. “Writing short” means using as many brief forms as you can learn. You might say, "But there are thousands of excellent court reporters who use few briefs and write most things out."  While this may be true, the following facts are indisputable. Speed is a combination of two things:  how many/few strokes you write and how fast your fingers can move.

Method 2: Prefixes, suffixes, and root words/parts

Some CART writers and captioners subscribe to a different theory of writing word pieces and making sure they are in their dictionary so that not only root words and prefixes and suffixes come up but also word parts.

Finger drills

Do you have some pesky word combinations that always seem to cause you to pause or hesitate? Try spending a little time exercising and working your fingers to improve your dexterity. Below is a sample of finger drills to get your hands stretched out before you begin your day:

Tricks

Habitual work toward improvement leads, inevitably, to improvement!

• Officials: Always write like you have to produce what you're writing.
• Freelancers: Always write like you will be producing an immediate rough draft.
• CART writers and captioners: Make continuous notes for dictionary cleanup and writing theory changes after the job is over.

Visualize the transcript while you’re writing

You should be writing realtime to yourself by now. Know what you're writing and know what that output is by watching that screen and monitoring your output. This is crucial to realtime writing success and progression.

Make job dictionary entries prior to every job

Consider limiting your job-specific entries to player names and case-specific terminology. One theory to subscribe to is that will have less brain damage if you write out technical terms that don't tran and make sure they are entered in your dictionary in case they come up. If you get started into the job and hear particular technical words with frequency, then that may be the time to come up with briefs for those on the fly. In this way, you can save your brain power for the job you're tackling, not fill it with a plethora of ideas from past witnesses who may not have anything to do with your witness anyway.

Not every tip will work for you

If the tip does not work for you, consider how you might manipulate the theory behind the tip to make it something workable in your own bag of tricks.

Bring your sense of humor

Don’t be so hard on yourself when things translate funny. Concentrate on the reason the error happened in the first place and how you can work on making sure it doesn't happen again.

Remember that it’s called a draft for a reason

Your realtime is never intended to be a final product. It should be readable and usable.

Asterisk use —"The asterisk is your friend."

Here are some examples of ways you can use the asterisk to help  with your realtime writing:

1. Use * to denote phrase in word/phrase conflict
2. Example: TAP = TAP    T A*P = At That Point
3. Use * to denote proper name
4. (Note: If you use "T" for "-TH" endings, then double stroke proper name)
5. Conflicts:    pat = PAT    Pat = PAT/PAT    path = PA*T
6. Use * to distinguish between "SHR" and "SL"
7. Example:    SHRUG - SHR*UG    SLUG = SHRUG
8. Use * to distinguish between sound-alikes

Examples:

• CREWS = KRAOUZ    CRUISE = KRAO*UZ
• GROWN = GROEN     GROAN = GRO*EN (OR GRAON)
• FLOWER = FLOUR     FLOUR =FLO*UR
9. Use * to distinguish "EX" and "COMP" prefixes

Examples:

• COMPILE - KPAO*EUL     EXILE = KPAOEUL
• COMPACT = KPA*KT       EXACT = KPAKT
• COMPEL = KP*EL           EXCEL = KPEL
• A.M. = A*M    P.M. = P*M
• G.M. = G*M   M.D. = M*D
• D.O. = D*O    P.E. = P*E

Many court reporters find the use of the asterisk to be very beneficial. It allows them to work smarter, not harder. Below are some of the comments and thoughts regarding the use of the asterisk:

• “An instructor at one of our schools made the suggestion that every time you add a new brief form to your dictionary, throw in the asterisk. That way you do not have to struggle to remember if the brief has an asterisk or not. That makes sense to me.”
• “The asterisk for me can sometimes be my emergency go-to, though, so I don’t know if I’d want to overuse it on purpose. But it’s just because of my many other uses for the asterisk already.  It is what I add to words to make them capped. For instance; STRAOET/STRAOE*T, DRAOEUF, DEPT, D*EPT, GRAOUP, GRAO*UP ... among several other uses I can think of for my asterisk. Not that I don’t use it in any briefs or phrases, because I do. Just not across the board.”
• “I use the asterisk for capping purposes as well.”
• “Yes, the asterisk is very much my friend!  I’ve used it since I began working, when I realized that I should probably distinguish between Bill and bill, Matt and mat, etc. One other thing I use it for is hyphens, in given circumstances. If I want to hyphen state-of-the-art, I asterisk the last word of the phrase, and I’ve group defined it to have hyphens. Without an asterisk it’s just the words without the hyphens. I’m horrible with examples, but one more I can think of is week-to-week. If I want the hyphens, I include the asterisk in the last word, the second week, and group define the phrase.”
• “Oh, yeah. I use my asterisk like that also! Except I have it defined with /-FT for of the so that it will tran STAIT/*FT/ART or any other phrase where of the is in the middle of it, and /TO* for to so that it will tran WAOEK/TO*/WAOEK or MAOEGT/TO*/MAOEGT or whatever familiar or odd phrase they might be using.”
• “I have WAO*EK with the asterisk defined as -week and DA*I defined as -day so that if they say two-week or modern-day, again familiar phrase or odd phrase, they will come up tranned without me having to write the hyphen. This goes for -foot, -feet, and a whole host of other words that fit this category. (SQUAO*T for -square-foot is one of my favorites!)”

Resolving conflicts

Most of CAT software programs now utilize intelligent conflict resolution so intelligently that even longtime realtime writers and captioners find that it is a reliable tool for improving translation. Conflict resolution can also be used to improve punctuation and capitalization during translation. Some intelligent conflict resolution of some CAT software programs can make sense of stacked or shadowed steno strokes.

It is always a good idea to resolve as many of your conflicts as you can on your own.

Here are some basic ways that can be accomplished.

• Use “RAOED”     for read a book
• Use “RAO*ED”   for reed in the grass
• Use “RAED”        for the past tense of read
• Use “HAER”        for hear
• Use “HAOER”     for here
• Use “STAOEL”    for steel
• Use “STA*EL”     for steal
• TO                         to
• TAO                      too
• TWO                     two
• MAOET                meet
• MAET                   meat
• SKAOEPB             scene
• SAOEPB                seen
• SEL                        sell
• KREL or SE*L       cell

When creating alternative strokes to resolve conflicts, it is a good idea to have your machine out and write them on your screen in realtime. You would be surprised how many times you run across an instance where you already use that stroke for something else or – more surprising still – how a possible entry that you know is not a word for you can be already entered into your dictionary as a misstroke for another word entirely.